Epistemology is the study of knowledge and how we know things. I certainly don’t claim to be an originator of this kind of thought.  There are many great books written on the subject, like Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher and Bach” and  “The Holographic Universe” by David Bohm. It can get to be an entertaining hobby and doesn’t cost very much to just sit around thinking about why you're thinking and how you manage to do it.  It is not recommended to think about what you are thinking when you are driving, however.[1]

One of the major necessary mechanisms that is considered in knowledge theory is that of a feedback loop.  A feedback loop is one of the fundamentals of consciousness, also. It defines our boundaries and identifies us as entities separate from our surroundings and from other entities. Feedback loops are established many ways, but for us in our general level of consciousness, feedback is established by physical senses.  By trial and error we discover the limits of our abilities. We can not fly like birds or walk through walls. As  babies, of course, we learn many things this way.  That’s why babies cry so much.

Physical input is the result of experimentation, and in personal self-development as well as in science constitutes primary knowledge. Primary scientific knowledge comprises basic facts like temperature readings, wind velocity, measurements of mass etc.  For personal data our inputs are sensory inputs from the billions of cells in our body, mostly registering pain but also pleasure (as in Star Trek when Data got a little flap of skin attached to his mouse).[2]  We get hot, we get cold and hungry, our liver hurts, our heart beats, our intestines make weird noises, we look in the mirror and get depressed—or not. After a couple of years of this (or whatever the baby psychologists have determined) we eventually figure out that all this stuff going on is our individual self and we are stuck with it. Thus,  primary knowledge is the feedback loop that forms our consciousness as individual fleshy beings. This is the basis of our personal ego-self.  This all may sound very reductionist but reductionism ultimately is nonreductionist.[3]

All science does is collect data. It is technology that takes this collection of data and makes some kind of “sense” out of it. A bunch of temperature-reading does not amount to much until one can use that kind of information to realize, as an example, that there is a Gulf Stream ocean current or the trade winds. The knowledge that is generated by the comparison, correlation , and classifying of primary knowledge is secondary knowledge.  Secondary knowledge is assimilated primary knowledge. It is the theory of this or that and is the sum total of all our model-building conceptualizing.

So basically, we have a physical organism that has much learned knowledge that we are not conscious of (we don’t think about making our heart beat or our stomach digest chicken), therefore it is subconscious.  We also have a brain function that is capable of figuring stuff out in the form of secondary knowledge which is the basis of our self-consciousness.[4]

If we wanted to extrapolate a little bit we could ask “if secondary knowledge and consciousness are the result of combining individual data points into models and paradigms, what would happen if one combined all of the models and paradigms into one thing? Would that be tertiary knowledge?” Yes indeed, it would be tertiary knowledge, and this is precisely what science and religion are attempting to do in their own diverse ways. Science seeks the Grand Unified Theory of all things and religion seeks the grand theory of all things—again, each in its own way.  But they both are pursuing definition of the same elephant. (Blind men and elephants, etc. . . )

At this point in our evolution our brains cannot achieve tertiary knowledge; or can they?[5]  No species ever evolved en masse.  Species only evolve by the few outliers and weirdos. Is it possible that in the minds of a few humans the capability for tertiary knowledge is evolving? If secondary knowledge results in self-consciousness, does tertiary knowledge result in universe-consciousness?[6]  Universe-consciousness imports continuum, a perfect awareness of shared experience and identity in the all that includes every human, plant and animal, and rock. Even rocks have experiences that must be assimilated in true tertiary knowledge.[7]

If  secondary consciousness is the result of synapses in the brain, and primary knowledge is the result of nerve endings (in the body at least), is tertiary consciousness the result of resonance?  Resonance is the phenomenon of constructive and destructive interference. If you hum at a guitar the strings will vibrate as the result of constructive interference. Water waves exhibit both constructive and destructive interference, as does light. If this is the case one must ask, “Are we fruiting bodies of the universe itself?”  After all, all the carbon, iron and other elements were formed from star fusion and subsequent explosions (look it up—stellar forging). If one were to continue with this line of thought one would soon arrive at conclusions that would be heretical to both religion and science. So we must be on the right track[8]    ####