Near the turn of the 19th century, Immanuel Kant became obsessed with discovering the synthesis of human knowledge, resulting in his three masterpieces of the human psyche: Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgement (1790).
His question: How is human knowledge of reality possible, and what are its limits?
As Kant dove deeper into the subject, it became increasingly more complex. He argued that we never experience the world exactly as it is in itself. Instead, our minds act like a built-in filter, processing raw reality through human frameworks like space and time, cause and effect. This revelation led to some of philosophy’s most enduring questions: Is reality isolated from our human knowledge? If so, can we live a happy life knowing this?
Philosophers across millennia offered different answers. Socrates argued that an unexamined life is not worth living. Marcus Aurelius taught that happiness comes from mastering our own judgments. Kant ultimately decided that the role of reason was to shape our understanding of reality to guide our actions.
Today, more than two centuries later, understanding reason may come down to three questions: What is reality? What do we know about it? And how do we interpret and value it?
Reality
Reality is what surrounds us, independent of us or our own thoughts. We’re subject to the weather, to large-scale global events, even traffic. Despite how much we may despise or love it, there’s not much we can do about the Earth’s rotational speed.
In the same way, we cannot control the thoughts and actions of the person on the subway next to us, our colleagues’, or our children’s. In turn, their reasoning impacts other people’s experiences. They all become part of the fabric of reality, actively defining their own life and the lives of others.
Understanding nature is identifying those patterns and regularities, all created independently of our experiences. We can trust that the sun will rise tomorrow. We can estimate how much breakfast we can make from the four eggs left in the refrigerator. We can expect when the train will arrive for our morning commute. Our world is, if not entirely definable, at least somewhat predictable.
Over time, that predictability becomes the basis by which we construct a framework for understanding life. What works and what doesn’t? How can we alter reality with our experiences, and what remains independent of our influence?
Understanding Truth
Knowledge grows because of questions like those. Our basis for understanding revolves around answering questions.
Consider the last time your car made a thumping sound when you started it in the summer. You might analyze the situation by asking questions like, “Where is the noise coming from?” or “When did the noise start?” From there, you’d narrow down possible explanations for the noise. When you take it to the shop, or you look under the hood, your answered question gets logged into your understanding of reality.
But there is a limited number of answers we can get for every question. From a limited perspective, we can always find truth. Truth can correlate perfectly with reality, but only within a limited scope. If that scope expands—if we hear that same noise from a car during winter instead—our understanding of reality may change. We can’t always apply the same logic in summer as in winter, because the underlying cause may be different.
Observation alone has limitations. Every time we ask questions, we get closer to the truth, but we can never arrive at complete truth when the scope is limitless. Experience becomes the key to understanding not only what we can control, but what an appropriate reaction to it should be. As a consequence, we see things through a filtered lens. We attempt to understand truth through a flawed perspective, since no perspective is completely unbiased.
It’s impossible to fully detach ourselves from personal experiences when seeking the truth. But, within a limited scope, we can approach truth. Every time we ask “why,” we’re pushing the boundaries of our observations. We find truth when our observations strongly correlate with reality under a given scope.
Defining Axioms
Given enough experience, we begin to associate questions with familiar answers.
Every answer to a question can be followed by another question, “why”; however, we cannot live forever seeking answers endlessly. At some point, every chain of explanations arrives at assumptions we already understand, accept, or regard as self-evidently true. These become our axioms, the foundational principles upon which further reasoning is built.
Many common life lessons emerge from this process. Murphy’s Law—whatever can go wrong will go wrong—is a familiar axiom for some people because they may have repeatedly observed situations that appear to confirm it. The axiom becomes a good enough interpretation of their experiences that most people stop asking why after a series of unhappy events.
Over time, these axioms become the basis for judgment. The patterns we repeatedly observe and accept form the foundation from which we evaluate new situations and make decisions.
Mapping the Territory
How do you put all that together? That’s the secret, isn’t it?
My years exploring physics have led me to see structure in life. Whether we are studying nature or navigating daily life, understanding often depends on identifying the relationships that remain invariant beneath changing appearances.
Consider a map. A subway map looks very different from a road map. A road map highlights one-way streets, speed limits, and routes. A subway map includes stations, connections, and transfer points. While you may find your desired destination from either, neither reproduces the territory exactly.
Yet both remain useful because they preserve the relevant structure of the territory for a specific purpose.
The same principle applies to life.
First, we identify what exists independently of us, the patterns, regularities, and constraints that form the foundation of reality.
Second, we seek to understand those structures as accurately as possible. We refine our understanding through observations, experiences, and questioning.
Finally, we map the structures for the purpose of achieving our goals, according to our values and aspirations.
The purpose of life is not merely to collect facts. It is more about experiencing what we desire to experience, or simply, becoming who we want to be. To achieve this, we need to discover the structures that govern reality, build a framework that helps us navigate it successfully, and incorporate what matters most to us along the way.
Life is truly what you make it!
Discovering Your Foundations
Of course, this is only the beginning.
Any framework for understanding life contains an enormous number of possibilities. The challenge is finding the path that leads to your fulfillment.
The task is unavoidably individual.
So where do you go from here?
Let’s take a deep dive.