I think that everyone, writer or not, has at one point heard the advice to “write what you know.” I’m not saying that this is bad advice, because I too have written what I know, but sometimes, a writer hits a wall. And that wall, cold and brick, has red spay-painted letters displayed across it: YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ELSE. THE END.
So what do you do when you’ve already written about everything you know? Well, you write about something you don’t know.
If I were to reach into a hat filled with slips of paper, each inscribed with something I don’t know or understand, some of my options would probably be the afterlife, my seemingly irrational fear of pens and pencils (for real), and the economy. Let’s just say that I happened to pick the piece of paper that said “infinity.” Fantastic. Let’s roll with that.
So. Infinity. I would start with a disclaimer that I’ve been grappling with the reality that is infinity for as long as I can remember. When I was a little kid, I would say that I want to live for infinity years, or that I want to make infinity dollars when I grow up. Of course, this is impossible because infinity isn’t a number. It’s a concept. And it’s a concept that I absolutely cannot comprehend, no matter how hard I try.
Merriam-Webster defines infinity as “the quality of having no limits or ends; the quality of being infinite.” Momentarily ignoring the fact that Merriam-Webster uses the word itself in the definition, I encourage you to actively try to imagine infinity. You’ll soon realize that everything you know has an end: life, seasons, even the Earth. How about space? Space is infinite. However, I’d like you to point me to someone who completely understands everything there is to know about space (and don’t point to Laplace’s demon).
I think it’s safe to assume that most people associate infinity with math or science. Parallel lines continue in the same direction for infinity, never intersecting. As I just mentioned, space goes on forever. Because of this, I often wonder why people consider science exact. There’s no way to map something that never end. As Moran discusses in Interdisciplinarity, “we cannot say for sure that ‘all swans are white’ because, although we might have seen a million white swans, the next swan we see might be black.” Yet for some reason science is seen as objective and neutral. I don’t believe that this is true. Even scientists make assumptions, just as those in the literary world may make assumptions about, for example, authorial intent.
My point, as roundabout as it seems, is that both science and English are a lot more similar than one might think. Both aim to explore and explain what appears unexplainable. People in both fields can make similar mistakes, but that might not be bad. If you make a mistake in the lab, you might discover something completely new. And if you hit a wall and write about something you don’t know, you might realize that you know more than you thought you did.
Either way, we might never fully understand infinity. At least, I definitely never will, but I’ll keep you updated.