this modern knowledge!'
'So you are saying we can't be competent philosophers without this understanding of quantum theory?' Jan's voice had a tone of mocking tolerance and I began to feel an antipathy towards him. Amazing how human frailties can take over rational argument. I tried to quell my rising sense of dislike for the young man but nature was more powerful.
'Competent philosophers? ' I raised my eyebrows and laughed. Yet, inside, I felt disgust at the way I was feeling about this young man. How do I get into such situations? More and more, my interactions with people had been troubled - some feel belittled by my comments, others just get angry and try to hit back. Yet, all the time, I just try out my ideas on them. I treat them like a blank canvas and put forward a thesis without knowing where it will lead. What annoys people, is that they suspect that they are merely being used as a rough template for my emerging ideas. When they come forward with their own musings, they find them cast aside as worthless or indeed baseless.
I could see that Maria's eyes were on fire with indignation at the seeming put down of her friend. This pained me as I liked the young woman's surety of herself. Yet the similar sense of assuredness from the young man, made me want to put him down. Is this a male on male thing? Am I the old stag prancing, with knotted antlers, in front of an upstart from the herd. Is this old stag trying to impress the female deer? I almost smiled to myself at the thought but luckily contained it. I was in enough trouble, time to placate and retreat.
'I'm sorry,' I said, my tone now conciliatory. 'I have the greatest respect for philosophers. My amusement was at the idea of applying the word competent, in its strictly utilitarian sense, to the likes of Plato, or Hume or Kant. Competency implies limitation. To be competent there has to be defined boundaries to a skill - once reached, you are deemed competent. But I believe, and I suspect you also believe similarly, that there are no boundaries to philosophy. It is an open set.'
As I spoke I studied the two young tourists to discern their interest in my words and I knew from the intensity of their expressions that they were engaged. I continued my thesis.
'That raises the interesting question - how to decide who is a good and who is a bad philosopher? There are no guild standards to judge by. In fact as soon as a standard is posited, a new philosopher comes forward to reveal the inadequacies of the old standard. But to get back to my original point, these temporary philosophical standards are always embedded in a current state of knowledge.'
Jan opened his mouth to intervene but I held up my hand feeling I knew what was troubling him.
'I know that they are also embedded in a culture and a history and a belief system, but for the moment I am only concerned with knowledge. The current state of knowledge was, in Plato's time, one of mathematics of shape and form - geometry. Very few common people at the time could have understood, or indeed had, the opportunity to understand the laws of geometry.'
Both were now beginning to look bemused and bewildered at where I was leading them but had not the temerity to interject.
'But the point I am making, is that these laws were understandable by the general philosophical populace, privileged though they were. Nowadays the background knowledge is one of general relativity and quantum theory: leading into a postulated theory of everything, that may encompass string theory in manifold dimensions, or even more weird multiverses, or wild foam theory. Alas, the modern philosopher cannot have the time or ability to have a real understanding of these exotic trends in human thought and, at the same time, be a savant in the broad history of philosophy, and contribute to modern philosophical thinking.'
The two young people had by now a glazed look in their eyes. I knew, immediately, I had lost them. I had lost them by introducing strange theories - theories of which they were, obviously, totally ignorant. But I had also lost them as potential converts to my way of thinking. I wanted to spread the word amongst young people, to think on life in the broadest sense. I wanted them to be excited by pure mathematics, weird new developments in physics and neuroscience. I wanted them also to be excited by aesthetic beauty, whether it be fine arts, architecture, music or literature. I wanted them to travel all roads that, taken together, lead to real understanding. I was convinced that no one road would lead there - it was not a conventional two-dimensional map. To access that elusive third dimension that leads to understanding, all roads on the surface of the map must be taken and taken at once!
I let the conversation recede and turned my head away, staring at the waves. I had lost interest, and they had lost interest. No harm done. That is what happens on journeys - senseless conversations and then parting never to meet again. But I knew we had become entangled and that this could not be destroyed. Sometime, somewhere in our futures, we will have our entangled states resolved. I had meant to explain what entanglement was, but had not got round to it. Did I really understand it myself?
A sudden big wave passed over the bow of the boat and sprayed everyone with sea water. The boat lunged down into the trough of the wave, and I felt my stomach churn. I held onto the rail, as the water lashed my face a second time. Everyone was now saturated, and belatedly the skipper started handing out oilskins to anyone who wanted them. Happily, I donned an oversize yellow suit that made me look like an old fisherman.
The sea was getting very choppy and, one by one, the passengers were succumbing to sea sickness. I tried not to look, as they retched over the side. Mentally I was fortifying myself against a similar fate. The Dutch couple, beside me, were white but had not given in, bravely fighting the nausea. From under my yellow hood I gave them a conciliatory smile, and was warmed to receive one in return. No harm done obviously. I turned to gaze at the wild waters. Inwardly, I was delighting in the turmoil of the sea. It was a fitting start to my journey.
Every time the boat crashed down, it sent a spray of white water into the air, accompanied by a loud bang. The water cooled my face and acted as a gentle balm. The gulls raced ahead and then, in a smooth gliding motion, let the boat catch up, before swooping down into a wave trough, and then off again. The waves were now looking ominous to a landlubber, but the skipper seemed unconcerned, inside his little cabin to the fore.
I was between worry and excitement. I sensed the power of the sea. The waves could take my life away at a whim. The interminable energy of the surface was a constant reminder to me that life is a delicate balance, at the best of times. The undulation of power, in the rise and fall, eddies, vortices and currents, created by the fury of the water, was a reminder that all life was subject to such seeming chaos, albeit at different levels. I thought of the surface of the sun. There, there is never peace - for the inferno of burning gases causes the surface to witness constant furious storms, worse than the fiercest hurricanes that earth can produce. The entire surface is one gigantic frenzy of chaos. Yet, from our distant perspective, the sun is a calm and peaceful presence.
At the other end of the scale, the vacuum of the quantum world sees storms of infinitesimal change, where tiniest fundamental particles and their antiparticles jump in and out of reality in an unimaginable frenzy. It is not a wonder, therefore, that the sea, which is a phenomenon of our human scale, can, too, exhibit such wild behaviour What is miraculous is that there are times when it is totally calm. That, peculiarly, is a phenomenon that is not apparent at the extremes of the infinitesimal or the cosmological.
Could there be a germ of insight here? Insight, I was constantly searching for insight, for some slight symmetry or particular asymmetry in the perception of life, or even in the personal understanding of what life presented to me. This insight could be my life's goal, once discovered. It could, in an instant, make sense of my existence - be the answer to the "Why?". That, why, is the most enigmatic question there is. It can spread its wings to encompass a multitude of situations - each then adding up into the philosophical why - the big question.
I had spent so much of my recent efforts on the question of how, that there was little need for a why - just
move back a stage of the how if there is a why. Eventually you find yourself at the Big Bang, the supposed start of time. But of course there was time before the Big Bang, but just in another universe. Soon we were looking at multiverses, and wild theories of foamlike surfaces, where untold infinities of universes come and go. This surface, too, has the form of a chaos of sea. You cannot escape turmoil. But where is the calm?
A large crash sent a wall of water over the boat and everyone was now saturated and miserable. Maria, the young Dutch girl, had succumbed to the elements and was wretchedly retching over the boat rail. Her companion, equally white, was heroically massaging her back but was also on the verge of voiding his stomach to the turbulence of the sea. I felt sorry for them. I knew that they would now sell their soul, just to be back on solid ground. The more they wished for relief, the slower time passed.
Time is such a mental thing, or maybe I should say duration, because time just is. It cannot be experienced. It is duration we perceive, and all our perceptions are personal. For me, at that moment, time was fleeting because, despite the discomfort and the potential danger, I was exulting in the