The birth of reality

  As Alejandro Terán-Somohano insightfully hints in his article, Logos filled and properly human work [1], labour was dehumanised long before it was automatised. It is important not to overlook this, since it contradicts the popular belief by stating that automatisation is (at least partly) the effect, rather than the cause, of the woes of many blue-collar workers.

  In any case, extensive automatisation of manual labour has been widely assumed as one of the implicit tenets in our technocratic age. What is still more of an open front is the question of knowledge, made especially relevant by the advances of AI, which seems to threaten many office jobs nowadays like robots did with factory jobs a while ago. Will human knowledge be replaced by AI? If so, to what extent?

  We cannot simply surrender knowledge to artificial intelligence, because both knowledge and intelligence are inherently human things. ‘To surrender’ would be ‘to surrogate’; therefore, what were to remain in that scenario would not merit the name of knowledge. However, it is very tempting to replace human knowledge with inferior substitutes because it is an arduous achievement, as some have pointed out:

  ‘Now, it is not wonderful that, with all its capabilities, the human mind cannot take in this whole vast fact at a single glance, or gain possession of it at once. Like a short-sighted reader, its eye pores closely, and travels slowly over the awful volume which lies open for its inspection. Or again, as we deal with some huge structure of many parts and sides, the mind goes round about it, noting down, first one thing, then another, as it best may, and viewing it under different aspects, by way of making progress towards mastering the whole. So by degrees and by circuitous advances does it rise aloft and subject to itself a knowledge of the universe into which it has been born.’ [2]

  As this lengthy quote, and our equally lengthy experience point out, the path of knowledge is a path of virtue. It is difficult in its beginnings, but rewarding in its end: ‘The pleasure derived from this study is unceasing, and so various, that it never tires the appetite.’ [2]

  Alas, the breakdown of knowledge is tracing an analogous path to the breakdown of labour. Artificial intelligence is not an intrinsic evil, but it has untapped an underlying problem with our epistemic values. And I think it is epitomised by the mantra knowledge is power [3]. The solution does not follow the lines of a Luddite annihilation of technology, but rather a reflection on the nature of knowledge.

  Knowledge is preceded by an external, objective reality outside of ourselves. Acquiring knowledge is an entry into – and therefore participation in – the intelligibility of an ordered cosmos. As the breakdown of labour was a denial of this participation [1], so too is its later twin, the breakdown of knowledge. So no, knowledge cannot be conceived of as raw power, at least not if we are to save it. Rather, it should be a rational response to the structure of reality, the aforementioned ‘universe into which [we have] been born’. It is humble submission more than tyrannical rule. It has the tone of recognition of what was already there:

 And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.’ [4]

  Knowledge has the quality of penetration into an objective reality, making it veritably subjective, in the sense it is the same reality as appropriated by the human subject. By this understanding of knowledge, memory cannot be outsourced to digital repositories, and the mastery of a subject cannot be delegated to AI.

  Finally, I think knowledge is an end in itself, and its pursuit is therefore worthwhile. There are, as we have seen, many difficulties along the way; so many, at times, that the dream seems untenable. But if we believe the end of man to be the arrival at Truth, then the perennial call is to persevere amid the confusions, errors and setbacks. And meanwhile, as a wise man pointed out, we will always have the solace of reality itself, urging us on,

‘for reality is a thing in which we can all repose, even if it hardly seems related to anything else.’ [5]

[1] A. Terán-Somohano, «Logos-Filled and Properly Human Work», Word on Fire. Accedido: 23 de diciembre de 2025. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/logos-filled-and-properly-human-work/

[2] J. H. Newman, The idea of a university, Third edition. London: Aeterna Press, 2015.

[3] F. Bacon, Meditationes sacrae and human philosophy. Kila, Mont.: Kessinger, 1996.

[4] T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding. Oxford: The Atlantis Press, 2023.

[5] G. K. CHESTERTON, EVERLASTING MAN. S.l.: LIGHTNING SOURCE INC, 2013.