The balance analogy

Learning to ride a bike is something almost all of us have done, and it represents a skill that we apparently never forget. It is also something that contains critical analogical value - namely, the gaining of knowledge (see knowledge).

Learning to ride a bike is more often than not a fraught experience. Sometime after getting on a bike for the first time we all fall off. Even after being pushed along, we also all fall off at some stage. Whether we use trainer wheels or people to hold us, until such time as we can ride unassisted, we're likely to fall off. The determining factor is what we know as balance. Balance is required to ride unassisted.

Because balance is either something we have it or we don't have, for the purpose of this analogy, is something that we either know or we don't know. Interestingly, even though we might get an inkling, until such time as we have it - we don't know it. This is very much the case for knowledge - we can get an intimation, hint or vague notion of something, but until as we don't it, we don't have certainty; and therefore we don't know it. To know is to have certainty.
Furthermore, there are a number of other aspects worth amplifying:

• falling off is a necessary part of learning not to fall off. This is a strange paradox, but ultimately, all knowledge is paradoxical.
• balance is absolute. The knowledge of balance is timeless insofar as all people in all places at all times know the same thing - which means the thing that is known is not relative.
• you can't teach balance or transfer it to someone else - it must be learnt (experienced) individually. Knowledge must be uncovered or encountered (generated) individually - it cannot be taught (only data, information or belief can be taught).
• the knowledge of balance just dawns. In the same way that balance is revealed (or knowing it just happens), knowledge must be revealed (discovered).
• once gained, the knowledge of balance doesn't go away. Because knowledge is timeless, it is also permanent - it does not go away.
• Once we know balance, we automatically apply it to other areas e.g. climbing. Knowledge, once gained, is automatically applied to other domains, things. This illustrates that knowledge is un-bounded

From this analogy we might even be tempted to draw another provocative conclusion, namely that knowledge is the same everywhere at all times (which makes it omnipresent); that because the same content of knowledge can be used in different domains and forms, it is omnifarious; and that because knowledge is absolute, and must assume absolute authority in any given matter, it might also be omnipotent.

All very interesting characteristics. Isn't it interesting to consider what the realisation of the knowledge of everything in all places at all times would be?