Worlds & Letters: The Planet Earth

The Planet Earth (6)

It is not possible to describe Earth adequately because it is made up of only minute particulars. All the events and things on the planet consist of lesser events, tinier things. These, in turn, resolve into smaller and smaller orders of being. Any attempt at a high-level definition must founder as it is contradicted in lower levels of organisation.

You humans are always trying to explain yourselves, to account for each other and your world. Lost in a maze of details, all your languages — spoken, scientific, sensual, mathematical, aesthetic — are inadequate to grapple with the sheer numerical bulk of events and things.

Doomed to perpetual (though relative) ignorance but unable to live comfortably with the terror of the void, you confer certainty, seemingly at random, on this or that.

This is your world, where even the numberless motes of matter have uncertain status. Your pathway through life is an adventure into speech, into the dark maze of understanding. The answers to your questions are questions.