Relativity

Interesting ontological question that occurred to me while running the Healthy Kidney 10K:

Is knowledge ever truly knowable?

Hold on a second there, pre-suppositionalist cowboy. I've been around so I know the tricks of the trade. I know all the dumb answers to that question:

"How do I know you actually said that? If I don't know, why
should I answer?"
Punk.
"Knowledge HAS TO BE knowable because that question
demonstrates a knowledge-base."
Inadmissable.
"42."
Patron Saint of Baseball.

But first the question came up as a question of relativity. As I was running, I'm passing by scores of runners. I love the feeling of the uphills because I've trained specifically for them. While other people look at hills and curse out loud or under their breath, I look at hills with a special exhiliration.

"I've trained for this. I've trained HARDER than this. This is
nothing." -- Roger Clemens

But I can't sustain that pace for the entire time. At the 5th or 6th miles, other runners started flying past me. These runners had a special store of power left in them for the final stretch. But then I noticed something. All throughout the race, other runners had been passing me by. Big runners, small runners, male runners, female runners, Achilles athletes... How fast was I truly going? I couldn't judge by my own senses. The world is relative and I had no fixed point of reference.

But thank God for the race-clock, right? That must surely be an objective point of reference to track my progress. But is it really? I've been reading other blogs and many other runners noted how their GPS watches gave them different split-times and distances than the official clock and course settings. The race chips on our feet logged different times as well.

"A man with one watch always knows the time. A man with two watches
never knows the time."

Which time is correct? Ultimately the chip-time was designated as the official time. That's a rather arbitrary ruling. Even so, does the concept of arbitrary expand so wide that it destroys even itself? What would be required in an objective measurement? (And of course it is only a few steps away before we can begin to speak of a moral relativity. But for now let us speak of tangible measurements of inches and meters.)

I'm not sure that objectivity is possible. Using the poor tool of my own imagination, I am unable to conceive of any situation or circumstance where one measurement system or method SHOULD be taken over another system or method. These all boil down to preferences and similarities/dissimilarities. The value of any given system is defined by its goal and context and I cannot conceive of any unifying goal or context.

Next post: The ramifications in a moral system