On Omniscience

[sdi]

Let's take Sallustius' words as given and assume that the Gods are those beings that Cause but are not Caused. Therefore each God is an eternal fixed point, dependent only upon themselves.

Let's also consider omniscience. A Mind, to understand something, must encode that information somehow. This can either be done directly (for example, our brains can be said to perfectly encode their own electrical signals, since that's what they are), or indirectly (those electrical signals may encode sensory signals of external things). But this indirect form is a lossy process ("the map is not the territory"), which implies that the only way to be omniscient of something is to contain its original, since the alternative is to only have a lossy view of it (and a lossy comprehension cannot be considered complete).

But the Gods are not contained within each other—this would violate our original axiom. Thus the Gods cannot be omniscient—except, of course, in the aggregate, since they collectively give rise to the Cosmos. But there is no way to recover this collective information, as it is broken into disjoint spheres.

In a smaller sense, though, the Gods—even secondary or tertiary ones—can presumably be omniscient of something, if that something is within their causal sphere. Insofar as Apollo gives rise to Asclepius, Apollo is omniscient of Asclepius. Insofar as Asclepius gives rise to Hygeia, Asclepius is omniscient of Hygeia.

I think this lack of omniscience is an interesting consequence of polytheism, and helps make sense of both myth and everyday experience, where it appears that the Gods are "warring" with each other. The apparent conflict is a necessary consequence of the Gods being limited in their domains, but also collectively composing the definition of the cosmos.

Comments

[barefootwisdom]

There are two options here.

1. Revise Nock's translation (in line with Murray, whom Nock criticizes in his own footnote), to read both genitives together: "Of the supramundane Gods, some create beings..."

2. The option that boccaderlupo gives us upthread.

Either way, hyperkosmiōn is an adjective that requires a noun; we supply that noun—"Gods"—from the previous sentence (and in option 1, it's explicitly there in this sentence, too).