Overview

The Stance of Unknowing is a work in epistemology and philosophy of science that examines the relationship between subject and object in scientific knowledge, ordinary cognition, and lived experience. The book argues that knowing is an embodied, adaptive strategy shaped by the cognitive agent's biological situation, purposes, limits, and scale. A sustained distinction is drawn between epistemic approaches centered on the knowing subject and ontological approaches centered on the object of knowledge, showing how their entanglement underlies persistent ambiguities in theory, observation, and interpretation. Through analyses drawn from physics, biology, mathematics, and artificial intelligence, the book investigates the role of the observer in parallel domains. Topics include relativistic and quantum measurement, the role of idealization, the biological grounding of cognition, and the status of artificial intelligence as a potential epistemic agent. Consciousness is treated as a sensory-guided simulation rather than a transparent window on the world, while scientific objectivity is reconceived as intersubjectivity rather than observer-independence. The final chapters extend this framework to moral and ethical reasoning, environmental responsibility, and the shared cultural roots and aspirations of science, religion, and art. The book concludes by proposing a ""stance of unknowing"" as a necessary complement to the pursuit of certainty.

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9781777485627

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