A follow-up reflection
First, I want to think about how we know things—not just the what, but the how. Are there things we know instinctively? Yes—we breathe without instruction. We flinch. We flee. We survive. But that kind of knowledge—embodied, reactive—is not what I’m talking about.
I’m interested in gained knowledge: the kind that exists outside the body and enters through our senses. It arrives, we process it, and maybe—just maybe—we act on it.
The Senses as Portals. We see, we hear, we touch, we smell, we taste.
Smell, honestly, gets the least respect. Taste follows close behind. (Though I admit—I’ve wondered what the Mona Lisa might taste like.) So that leaves sight, touch, and hearing—the primary channels for building knowledge.
At first, this knowledge is observational. We watch. We listen. We notice. That gets us somewhere. But then we want more.
So we build experiments. We drop feathers and cannonballs. We take clocks apart. We craft microscopes and telescopes to go further than nature allows.
At this stage, ethics hasn’t really entered the equation. We’re extending our senses. Unless, of course, you’re Galileo. Then knowledge itself becomes a threat.
When Knowing Crosses a Line
Fast forward a few centuries. World War II. The Nazis murder millions—and experiment on hundreds of thousands. They write it all down. How much cold can a body take? What happens when you remove organs while someone is still alive? What are the limits of a drug, if you don’t stop administering it?
When the Allies find the records, a debate begins: Should we use this data? Some say: It honors the victims. Others: It doesn’t matter—knowledge is knowledge. Still others: It matters how we come to know. The real question becomes: At what cost?
The Case of Szukalski
This brings me back to Stanisław Szukalski, the Polish sculptor I wrote about earlier. When asked how he learned anatomy, he said: “From my father.” And he meant it literally. After his father died, Szukalski took the body from the morgue and dissected it himself, alone in his studio. He didn’t kill him—but was he waiting? Could he have learned anatomy another way? Yes. Other artists did.
Did that experience set him on a different path—one marked by brilliance, but also deep psychological fracture?
Maybe.
Knowledge That Damages the Knower
There are learning experiences that change people permanently. Many come with ethical cost. What if the only way to fully understand serial mass murder required entering into it—becoming, for a time, the very thing one hoped to stop? The outcome: lives saved. The cost: a self, altered or lost.
History is filled with versions of this choice—where the instrument of knowledge becomes complicit in suffering.
The Moral Line
This is where I’ve landed: A moral choice cannot be justified solely by outcome. Not by efficiency. Not by potential good. Not even by how many lives might be saved.
A moral choice begins with the act itself—whether it is good to do, not whether it might be good after. We are always learning. But knowledge is not innocent simply because it is useful. It matters how we come to know. Some methods corrupt the act. Some acts corrupt the knower.
Not all knowledge should be pursued. Not every door should be opened simply because it can be. Sometimes the price of knowing is too high. Sometimes the answer must be: not this way.
A Work Progressing 