For I believe that part of knowledge is its desire to show itself and its refusal to put up with a merely hidden existence. I find mute knowledge dangerous, for it grows ever more mute and ultimately secret, and must then avenge itself for being secret.

Elias Canetti
About This Quote

The natural world is the opposite of the natural sciences. That is, in nature, knowledge is fully revealed to us. We can see and feel and touch and taste and hear and experience the reality of the world. In contrast, in science, we can only observe what we can see and feel and touch and taste and hear and experience the reality of the world.

There is a saying that knowledge is power. However, what we can know about nature is limited to our senses. On the other hand, we know about science through observation and experimentation.

This limited knowledge makes us dependent on scientists who interpret their observations for us. As such, they become our masters because we live life according to what they tell us to do or not to do. However, if we remove ourselves from this dependence on science and start looking at nature itself without needing scientists to interpret it for us, we discover that nature is very different than what we think it is due to our lack of knowledge.

For example, we think that plants grow up, that fish swim down, that birds fly up — but the truth is that plants grow out away from their roots, fish swim up away from their food, birds fly away from where they hatched — all of which are different than what we had thought.

Source: Die Gerettete Zunge: Geschichte Einer Jugend

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