The Quest for Truth in the Twenty-First Century, a Reflection on the Ideal Epistemological Paradigm

Nowadays we live in an era of new discoveries occurring at a tremendous rate. Such a phenomenon has the propensity to create new and constant challenges likely to revolutionize our way of life. As a matter of fact, the twenty-first century stands out through its complexity and sophistication concomitantly. Its modus operandi is prone to generate further sophistication, exponentially, over time. We have almost reached an irreversible threshold where any system aspiring to survive needs to adapt to the new standards inherent in our Aquarian age. Precisely, one of the most important benchmarks of this age is thinking across disciplines.  It follows that we cannot solve crucial problems within the limited and warped prism of one sole epistemic area. Indeed, since each discipline has but a tiny portion of the truth, it cannot, motu propio, have a monopoly of the whole truth. For instance, it is proven that physics, cymatics and music can help treat brain injuries (brainwave entrainment through music). Cubism has enlightened quantum mechanics (perspectivism/dualistic nature of sub-atomic particles) by peeling off the layers of mystery in which the latter was enshrouded. Through cubism and its perspectivism, physicists finally grasped the behavior of photons and quantum entanglement because just like photons can be viewed either as particles or waves (perspectivism/quantum mechanics), reality can be viewed in different aspects depending on the observers (perspectivism/cubism, wave-particle dualism). A philosopher validated this viewpoint and summarized it as follows: “everything that is perceived is perceived according to the view of the perceiver”. On the other hand, surrealism has helped decrypt the mystery of the fourth dimension of space time continuum studied in relativistic physics (Dali’s Christus Hypercubus/Tesseract). Poetry has elucidated how some brain organs function (angular gyrus, amygdalae and cross-modal metaphors in neurolinguistics). Additionally, art and science are not opposite, but complementary because they are intrinsically the two sides of the same coin whose overall understanding will enable us to sublimate nature by asserting our sovereignty over the universe.   De facto, when art complies with eminently rigorous criteria such as symmetry, higher order, coherence, mathematical accuracy, and lacks any form of randomness, then it becomes science.  Conversely, when science complies with eminently rigorous criteria of refinement, complexity, and sophistication, then it becomes art.  For instance, Picasso’s Dora Maar, Dali’s Christus Hypercubus, or Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper can be viewed either as art or science according to the criteria applied to these three masterpieces. Consequently, there are cryptic connections between most areas of human knowledge.  By virtue of these considerations, what might be the most cogent approach of the quest for knowledge in the twenty-first century? That is precisely the question on which we will reflect in this article.