The sixth side of the box

I was trying to construct a metaphor for my belief system earlier today and came up with the following:

Over the long arc of human history we humans have wanted to understand that which we did not, and could not. We constructed explanations using the best available analogies we had at hand. The sun became a flaming chariot (among other things of course), stars were pinpricks in the ceiling of the sky, bad weather was the result of our bad actions, etc. As we've come to understand how the world works the number of things for which we provide 'supernatural' explanations has shrunk. This despite the fact that for every answer science provides it asks several more questions. We really don't understand how things work, but we understand enough to satisfy most people is most areas, though we haven't resolved the big mysteries that have existed since the beginning of us. Things like 'where do we come from' 'what happens when we die' and 'why am I here' remain elusive and unresolved.

I generally believe that the longer humans exist the greater an understanding of the universe we will gain (assuming we don't destroy ourselves or are destroyed otherwise). Thus has it been and thus shall it continue. And while it may seem impossible to answer those elusive questions, there's really no reason to assume that they can't be resolved (even if we don't like the answer). We may not personally live to see the answers, but that seems entirely irrelevant to me. Billions of others have died without having answers to even simpler questions. In some sense we should be content to have been part of our particular moment of discovery (there were lots of less interesting periods intellectually).

So to this box...

Imagine you can see what appears to be a six sided object. You can only see 5 of the sides (or maybe less, depending on your viewpoint). Each of those sides is smooth, flat, though each of a different color. The natural conclusion would to believe that that sixth side was just like all the others. It conforms to what you understand about boxes and nothing else in your experience would lead you to think it might be anything but flat. But what about the color? It could be anything. Since you can't see it, and can't figure out how you would ever see it, you decide that that sixth side is your favorite color, and lots of people agree, though there are others that seem to think it's a completely different color.

Why does the sixth side have to be like the others in any way? Why is the difference only limited to the color? Only a limited imagination requires it to be like that. Only a mind that can't come to grips with the fact that the best it can imagine is only the best version of what it had seen before.

Now that sounds pretty 'spiritual', and as I've written it down I would agree, but in the context of my earlier conversation it was more grounded. My use of the box analogy was related to the notion that there's got to be more to being human "than just chemical processes", a statement that I equated to the sort of thinking that has always driven humans to look for 'supernatural' answers to things they don't understand. What exactly are "just chemical processes"? I would argue that we don't understand chemistry or physics nearly well enough to understand the wild things and crazy interactions that are going on at the tiniest levels. Things like quantum entanglement are bizarre and counterintuitive, and it's just one of many weird sub-atomic processes we've just begun to wonder about. The 'just' in that statement only points to a degree of shortsightedness by the person making the statement.

My personal understanding of the world involves wondering mightily about what the sixth side of the box looks like, but it does not assume that side is anything like the sides that I can see, nor does it require me to make assumptions simply to eliminate an anxiety in my life. I'm content in the state of my lack of knowledge even if I'm constantly searching to boost the amount of knowledge I have. I'm also content with the possibility that I will likely never know. And even more than that, I'm open to the possibility that I am entirely wrong, possibly about every side of the box.

I sort of see that over the course of human history we've slowly seen more and more sides of the box (maybe a more complicated geometry is appropriate, but the box is simpler) but still haven't seen it all. Hopefully we'll get the chance.