Expect the unexpected

Originally posted on December 23, 2021

There was a time (at least supposedly) when human philosophers were so daring, or so hubristic, that they believed they could know pretty much everything (at least in principle). There are still such people, although today mostly in science: "Why does the universe conform so well to our minds? It must mean we are SPECIAL" (always followed by the usual required huffing and puffing about teleology of course being wrong, and so on). Now, it´s easy to see the anthropocentrism of such a claim. 

Then, Kant took his walking stick and started to obsessively-compulsively walk the streets of Königsberg (a town he never left - must have been a really nice place). After Kant, philosophers drew the conclusion that we can´t know anything at all. Not really. 

But isn´t that equally anthropocentric? When the human mind realizes that it´s (surprise) finite, it punishes the cosmos by lashing out at it, claiming that it may not even exist...since the SPECIAL humans can´t fully comprehend it. Isn´t this just a kind of "sour grapes" hubris? 

And why are regularities seen as the closest thing we can have to "evidence" that there really is an objectively existing outside world? Surely, it´s the other way around? 

It´s the completely unexpected that shows us that the world is, at any rate, independent from *our* minds. An anomaly is the great pointing-out instruction of the cosmos. The talk about regularities is another form of anthropocentrism. After all, we can pretend to be in control of the regular, the predictable (predictable by our philosophies or sciences). The anomalies show us that we´re not really in charge of everything. Or anything. Objectively, mind-independently. And that´s what makes them so scary.