unknowableness
Definition
- Noun:
- The quality of being impossible to know: "unknowableness" refers to the state or condition of being beyond human comprehension, perception, or understanding. It denotes something that cannot be known or grasped by the mind.
Usage Examples
- (The fact that the origin cannot be known.)
- (The impossibility of knowing what will happen.)
- (The idea that God's nature cannot be fully understood.)
Advanced Usage
"The unknowableness of the divine": a theological concept that God's essence is beyond human knowledge.
- Mystics often meditate on the unknowableness of the divine. (They focus on the inability to fully comprehend God.)
"Epistemic unknowableness": a philosophical term for knowledge that is inherently inaccessible.
- Some questions, like what existed before the Big Bang, have epistemic unknowableness. (They are impossible to know due to limits of human knowledge.)
Variants and Related Words
Unknowable (adj): not able to be known.
- The details of the ancient ritual remain unknowable. (They cannot be discovered or understood.)
Unknowability (n): a synonym for "unknowableness", often used interchangeably.
- The unknowability of the future makes planning difficult. (The impossibility of knowing future events.)
Knowable (adj): able to be known.
- Scientific facts are generally knowable through observation. (They can be discovered.)
Synonyms
- Incomprehensibility: the quality of being impossible to understand.
- Ineffability: the quality of being too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.
- Transcendence: the state of being beyond the limits of ordinary experience or knowledge.
Related Idioms
Beyond one's ken: outside the range of one's knowledge or understanding.
- The mysteries of the deep sea are beyond our ken. (They are unknowable to us.)
A closed book: something that is not known or understood.
- Quantum mechanics is a closed book to most people. (It is unknowable to them without study.)