A Meditation on Rock Art
Remembering the implicit and experiential in an age that emphasizes the tangible and quantifiable.
The premise of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution it produced is that we can know the world. We can reason things out using logic and empirical evidence to make explicit what was formerly usually intuited.
These conclusions are not wrong. The scientific method has demonstrated time and again that when applied to questions about our physical world it can frequently answer them, at least probabilistically. Through careful observation, repeatable experiments, and the accumulation of quantifiable data we can reach sound conclusions about our planet and the universe.
However, the universe is under no obligation to offer us only experiences that can be tested and verified in this way. When it refuses to do so, we should not ignore the opportunity to ask what these encounters with unanswerable questions and unsolvable problems can teach us.
I was reminded of this on a recent hike a few miles outside of Moab, Utah. The friend I was hiking with found some old etchings in a cliff face at the top of a canyon (see picture at the beginning of this article). Though there were similarities to rock art we had seen before, this particular panel was stylistically…
