Is It the Forest or the Trees

The ever increasing degree of specialization in human collective knowledge has resulted in a level of detail that is beyond the comprehension of any one individual. The great early 20th century physicist Erwin Schrödinger lamented this high degree of specialization in his preface to ‘What Is Life?’ as follows:

 
We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge. The very name given to the highest institutions of learning reminds us, that from antiquity to and throughout many centuries the universal aspect has been the only one to be given full credit. But the spread, both in width and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge during the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole; but, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it. 

Erwin Schrödinger 'What Is Life?' 1944

The 70+ years since this publication have seen the volumes of human knowledge increased by many orders of magnitude, but a clear understanding of the All-That-Is remains a mystery.  Perhaps even more of a mystery, now that it is buried in all this newly discovered detail.  What is really need to 'welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole'.

Some are convinced that the whole can only be understood by understanding all the parts. For the All-That-Is, understanding all the parts to understand the whole is beyond the range of human understanding.

There is a commonly understood notion that someone can become so involved in the details of a particular problem that they lose sight of the broader situation as a whole. In so doing, the big picture view of this more general situation is lost in the mass of details. By analogy, they can’t see the forest for the trees. Such is certainly the case in the search for the ultimate truth.

Take for example an actual forest, the level of detail to be considered is very considerable. There is botany for the plants, and zoology for the animals. There are matters of geology and hydrology in addition to climate and . Science has long since recognized this dilemma for real forest, and they have created a higher level of study that extracts bits and pieces from these other masses of detail to create ecology.

The unimaginable levels of detail are much like the Sirens described in Greek mythology who with their enchanting music lured passing sailors to shipwreck on their rocky island. There is something similarly enticing about these extreme levels of detail that many seekers of truth cannot resist. They are lured by them into an inescapable, complex collection of information that smothers and ultimately consumes them.

Resist the alluring temptation of the incredible layers of detail.