I have a concern about the volume of things I read or hear and then forget without knowing where to put them in the unorganized pile of data in my head. The input is just too much for me it seems. Things are worsened by the fact that the intellectual world I am exposed to is primarily a world written in English—a second language—which always maintains a gap between any input and my conception of it. This gap itself is a rich source of confusion, full of disturbing questions that have passed my mind for a glimpse of time and then disappeared without being resolved or removed. All this has led to an exhausting vertigo and is draining my thirst for knowledge. One might say that I shouldn’t dive in a bottomless ocean if I don’t know how to swim, i.e., perhaps I’d better start with a pool. But the thing is, first, I don’t find at all any pools isolated from oceans (if we don’t want to say the ocean). Things don’t mean anything in themselves if you don’t look at them in the bigger picture. So how big a picture is sufficient to give you a unit of knowledge? That’s the question. Second, I think this kind of futile splash in water is a helpless characteristic of me as a member of my generation. We are exposed to far more immense worlds of information than we have the natural ability to suitably conceive. Things only prove false, or at least uncertain. The pile of information before us is built on no principal foundations; it’s always up to you to raise a question about anything.

P.S. This has nothing to do with science, science wars or objectivity.