Back to index

2:12

(In »The three dramatic revolutions of the Internet age«)

Thus, Descartes considers himself to have established an original subject, to which he connects a corresponding object. With this as an indisputable axiom, he reckons that he can quickly think into existence more and create more subjects and objects. However, a faith – a faith by its nature is subjective as well as arbitrary and transient – is not the same thing as a truth. A truth is assumed, by definition, to be objectively verifiable, proven by examination and valid for all time. What we are forced to accept, whether we like it or not, is that the foundation of ideas of both the self and the world is always a more or less cohesive faith and never pure knowledge. We believe ourselves to be practising science when the subject observes the Universe. We know that we are practising religion when the subject experiences that the Universe is peering back at the subject. But actually, neither the inner subjects nor the outer objects that we believe that we are perceiving, and which we use as building blocks when constructing our image of the world – our paradigm – exist.