The rationalist claim (in the western world at least) has always been that the universe is completely knowable.
This does not mean that the universe is knowable now or even knowable by humans, but that the reality, as it is, is completely knowable in principle; that the entire universe can be intellectually grasped, logically systemised, perfectly known to every last detail.
However, there has also been a long-standing philosophical tradition of a transcendental reality. As Kant famously put it, we can know things as they appear, the phenomena of the world but we can never know things as they are in themselves, for themselves; the noumena of reality is impossible to grasp through intellect at all. Of course, this does not mean that it cannot be grasped at all, much mystical thought centres around the idea that while this immanent, transcendental cannot be intelligently and logically known, it can however, be felt. The idea being that reality may not in the end conform to our peculiarly human systems of logic, but that what it is in itself, can be experienced in totality without the hindrance of attempting to rationalise it. We are speaking, of course, of the proverbial ineffable, numinous experience that much of humanity has felt.
Wittgenstein, the darling child of the logical analysts themselves, was even aware of this mystical reality. His famous last proposition in the tractacus was that "what we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence." To those committed to the logical paradigm, like Russell, this sentence was the crowning glory of the whole idea, that to speak is to render intelligible and thus what was unintelligible didn't deserve our attention. However, there is another interpretation of this proposition and the one that Wittgenstein favoured was that while it is true that the logical paradigm has no place for the ineffable - the real questions of life, the questions of metaphysics and morality and aesthetics could not be placed in logical language and thus logic itself was inadequate.
There is not much discussion in contemporary thought about this rationalistic idea, perhaps because of the spectacular success of empirical scientism and its adamant, aggressive plans to conquer everything and make it all rational, intelligible, impeccably logical. However, and this is the question I want to ask here, is this rationalistic paradigm deserved? Is reality, in all its totality completely knowable?
I'm sorry
proverbial ineffable? I think not.
Sure Sufism may have something to say about this. Considering that after settling down from their Jihadistic moods in the Indian subcontinent they essentially stole alot from Hindu theology. For example concepts like Wahdat Al-Wujud screams plagiary from Hindu philosophy.
And we may find the concept of "Dao" in Daoism as well. Etymological analysis of the word Dao indicates numerous Indo-European cognates possibly indicating the origin of this word and its concept having transferred to the Chinese.
Topic: The Rationalist Claim