to search for a general theory of knowledge, which is not only practically useful for providing the analysis of human knowledge of all kinds and the guidance for all aspects of human cognitive activities, but also capable of critically accommodating all other epistemological views.
The specific direction of resolution of this problem proposed in the present study may be described very briefly by beginning with the recognition of the four distinctive, though not mutually exclusive, kinds of human knowledge, as follows:
(I) physics;
(II) mathematics;
(III) philosophy; and
(IV) the algorithmic part of human knowledge, which could be computerised.
Here, the third type may be understood broadly enough to include ordinary knowledge as well as knowledge of values. Such a view as well as the very admission of these four types of knowledge naturally constitutes epistemological views. However, the existing range of such epistemological views is deeply flawed and even inconsistent. Indeed, the major chasm therein is concerned with none other than the very possibility of a universal general theory of knowledge. On the one hand, the failure of developing such a general theory of knowledge throughout history, the seemingly fundamental distinction between the knowledge of facts and the knowledge of values, and the current intellectual climate of postmodernism and historical and cultural sensitivity all serve as the ground for a negative stance on the issue. On the other hand, to the extent to which all these kinds of knowledge, as well as all human knowledge, are in fact considered under the same ordinary general concept of knowledge, it must be possible to develop that ordinary concept of knowledge further towards a more systematic general theory of knowledge, which could not only be applicable to all the particular cases of human knowledge, but also identify and account for various essential features shared by all the particular cases of human knowledge. There is no third general direction on this issue. Now, the first direction is intrinsically unsatisfactory. For in its emphasis of the distinctness of different kinds of knowledge, it simply precludes the possibility of seeing different kinds of knowledge as different species of one and the same genus, whereas the second direction admits that very possibility. This fact, however, does not make the second direction more promising, because no satisfactory general theory of knowledge has ever been found, which is sensitive to the significantly diverse natures of various kinds of knowledge as well as to their historical and cultural particularities.
It is then obvious that whereas the first direction leads us to a endless total desert where no general theory of knowledge could ever exist, the second direction seems to confine us to a seemingly endless cemetery of dead or mortal epistemological views. In the present study, I have chosen to bring a new life to such a cemetery to transform it into a land where both the dead and the living co-exist in accordance with the very nature of nature. It is such a possibility that I have dared to explore here, although given the past history of failure, I have also been fully aware that such an endeavour is more likely to fail, leaving nothing but yet another corpse after all too brief a life, if at all. But then, in magnis et voluisse sat est (in great things, it is sufficient to have tried). Indeed, the very large number of philosophical and epistemological corpses clearly demonstrates that just as man is mortal, the nature of human spirit is to pursue its pursuit.
The positive proposal of the present study is based on the dictum, knowledge guides action, which is then developed into a general theory of knowledge, called the general epistemological theory. As required, this theory presents a general theory of knowledge practically useful for analysing all kinds of human knowledge and for guiding all aspects of human cognitive activities. It also includes, among others, the following more specific consequences:
(1) it provides a way of resolving the interpretation problem of quantum theory;
(2) it provides a characterisation of the nature of mathematics, which could account not only for the general direction of the history of development within mathematics, but also for the applicability of mathematics to other areas of human knowledge;
(3) it implies the thesis that structured computer programming should be regarded as being based on a kind of mathematics, commonly known as discrete or algorithmic mathematics, much in the same way in which physics and engineering have been based on mathematics in the traditional sense; and
(4) it presents a way to develop a totally new theory in the form of a general philosophical theory for the human world, called Pragmatic Rationalism, which is as respectable and useful as any scientific theory, whereby it could establish philosophy as the way to understand and guide the direction of human civilisation, and even as a rational replacement of traditional religions.
What is particularly noteworthy here is that one and the same general theory of knowledge could serve as the basis for all these diverse consequences.
If this general theory of knowledge is, in fact, successful as claimed, it may be regarded as providing a general and unified way of understanding the realm of human knowledge, consisting of various distinctive kinds of human knowledge, just as Newton presented the first general unified theory for the understanding of the physical world including both the celestial and terrestrial phenomena. About the final result of my endeavour presented here, I only wish I could say with total sincerity what Newton himself said of his immortal work:
I heartily beg that what I have here done may be read with forbearance; and that my labours in a subject so difficult may be examined, not so much with the view to censure, as to remedy their defects. (Newton, Principia, Preface to the First Edition)
