Expository Essay: You Can't Handle the Truth!

You Can't Handle the Truth!

H.P. Lovecraft's famous novel, At the Mountains of Madness, throws the commonly held goal of the pursuit of knowledge into question. With the terrible and disastrous knowledge of the elder ones, human life and survival is threatened. Those who knew of their existence tried to do everything they could to prevent this knowledge from being discovered, until the Narrator and protagonist is forced to speak in order to prevent a second expedition to the Antarctic. This idea that there is knowledge too difficult or dangerous to know is not new, being as old as history itself. But in this work the idea is proposed that there is knowledge that is impossible for humans to comprehend and not go mad, which is supported by fields of philosophy and advances in scientific theory. One of these theories goes so far back as the fifth century BC, with a Greek named Zeno.
In ancient Greece, Zeno proposed several paradoxes of motion which all come to the conclusion that movement itself is an illusion, and that the true reality that humans experience is wholly unavailable in terms of what humans can access with their senses. One of these paradox speaks about moving towards a door. In order to reach this door, one must first reach halfway between oneself and the door. And before one can reach halfway, they must reach halfway to the halfway point. This recurses until one is put in the position of having to move halfway between the two smallest resolutions of space, which is by definition impossible. This thought experiment illustrates one of the numerous aspects of motion and a person's perception of reality that are skewed or in question of its truth. This situation lends validity to the idea that there are concepts relating to the nature of reality and existence which are another plane of thought which is unexceptionable by the restricted minds of humans and their sensual perception.
Another school of thought relates to metaphysics and transcendental idealism as proposed by Emmanuel Kant. This cosmological theory purposes the true existence of the objects that are encountered in life, but that one's perceptions and interactions are with the imperfect and not fully encompassing phenomena. These phenomenal projections of the self existent noumena are different for every different perspective that a person could have. This theory, as a rectification of empiricist and rationalist views, necessarily proposes that the true form of reality is inaccessible by perceptions made from within the same dimension of existence. If this cosmological theory is true, then the endeavor to fully understand the universe will ultimately be an exercise in futility. These theories are also getting new scientific support in the form of String Theory.
String Theory is one of the leading explanations for what quarks and all matter are themselves comprised of. This theory successfully incorporates all currently known data on particle physics. The major issue with this theory is that due to the infinitesimally small size of the energy strings, the theory is unfalsifiable. This means that if String Theory is indeed true, then a necessary component of reality and existence will be by definition imperceivable by all means of observation. This along with the philosophical backing promotes a very real possibility that our universe presents an inherently imperceivable existence
At the Mountains of Madness plays upon the humans' inherent fear of the unknown as the basis for the horror aspects of the story. Although Cthulhu and the elder ones may not exist, the fact that the reality one lives may be one of a number of different situations in which ultimate understanding of the universe is an impossible task is a very real possibility. The world that may seem to be so real and common could actually be so foreign and alien in nature that it becomes impossible for the limitations of the human condition to overcome.

Sources:

H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction. By H.P. Lovecraft, with an Introduction by S.T. Joshi. New York, NY: Barnes & Noble, Inc.; 2011; ISBN 978-1-4351-2296-3; leatherbound, 1120 pages.

Grier, Michelle. "Kant's Critique of Metaphysics." Stanford University. Stanford University, 29 Feb. 2004. Web. 22 May 2015.

Greene, Brian. "Why String Theory Still Offers Hope We Can Unify Physics."Smithsonian. Smithsonian Institute, 15 Jan. 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.

Dowdon, Bradley. "Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.