Excelsior

[sdi]

Archimedes, the Sicilian, asked for a fulcrum situated outside of the earth to move the earth, saying: “Whilst I inhabit it I cannot act upon it.”

(Synesios on Dreams IV, as translated by Isaac Myer.)

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Arithmetical truth cannot be defined in arithmetic.

(Informal statement of Tarski's Undefinability Theorem.)

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From any given system, one hasn't the perspective to make sense of that system. For that, one needs a perspective outside the system.

This has two implications. First, it makes sense of why the infinite becomes finite in an attempt to know itself: there is nothing outside of God, and so an outside perspective must be constructed, so that part of God may come to know God in part. Second, it perhaps explains why we strive ever higher: if we have questions about the system, it is only by ascending to the next higher system that we can answer those questions, causing us to rise until we return to God.

Comments

[sdi]

This is of interest to nobody but myself, but Latin excelsior in Greek is ὑψηλότερος hupseloteros. In both cases, it means "higher," and I happened to run it into it a while back in my Greek lessons (where I translated it as "loftier").