Behind the facade of certainty begins the real questioning. In his philosophical column UMBRAL, Colombian philosopher Bruno Maduro takes us to the limits of our knowledge. He analyzes the blind faith in scientific dogmas, questions the construction of our history and sheds light on the unsolved enigma of the human condition. A space for thought beyond illusions, where truth often only glimmers in error and in the intermediate realm of intuition.

We do not truly know the full nature of our mind, and therefore find the real, intelligible world elusive. When an attempt at self-evaluation is made, that intelligibility clashes with our illusions and aspirations, our long cultivated utopias and desires. It is usually these illusions that govern our will, and in fact were we to critically review them, we would realise that they have never suited us.

 Dissolving an ingrained illusion is simple: live with it, face it full on, in its entirety, and the illusion, by exposing its true nature, will vanish. But despite this apparent simplicity, the task requires courage often beyond our possession. There is a real terror in trying to accept that this or that are part of who we are. The mind does not adjust to events when acknowledging mistakes is the primary route. Thus, the truth of the things that happen to us evaporates. It is impossible to have a clear view of what we are and what we see, as long as illusions and personal fantasies remain. The idea that there is a universal human understanding that judges, deciphers, explains and masters the world without the intervention of the illusory and mythical, is an implausible position. Anyone claiming otherwise is bordering on fundamentalism or manipulation, even of themselves. Everything lying outside this framework, everything that avoids reality and the power of personal fantasies, will only amount to fallacy, dry eloquence, and empty argumentation.

Those who resist this insight, simply to avoid seeing themselves, will become part of that general and barely tolerable reasoning of an "intellectual" elite that seeks only to convince the public, but not to test, examine, explore, recognise or gain reliable knowledge of the world of these real humans to which we belong. What is left to guide us in this myopic world: intuition or enigma? Speculation or probability? The possibility of knowledge or the risk of the expert? What is left for us? To believe that an escape from ourselves and our fantasies will be centred on assuming a realistic and positive stance? To trust only in the sciences and their scientists because supposedly they do not work with our errors nor with the illusions held by each human being? Could it be that the priestly caste of scientific scholars is oblivious to the fantasies and fallacies that they bequeath us when we realise that they were mere exhalations and illusory smoke? Could it be that the real escape from fantasy lies in the sciences?

From a scientific perspective, it is clear that when the wise have been right about a matter, have found something real in knowledge, it has been through trial and error, or discovery -  to look here, to stumble on something there. Often, knowledge has come by plunging blindly into uncertainty, and simply chancing upon, for example, the penicillin fungus, or by intuitive persistence, being surprised by X-rays, astonished by friction matches or by the rubber of each shoe sole or car tire. Chance and fortune also belong to the so-called sciences.

In truth, faced with the innovations and inventions our scientific age boasts, we see no common thread claiming absolute clarity and precedence, no abundance of logic that presumes to be the ultimate discoverer. This era of sages has attempted to sell us, though the academic world and contemporary discourse, a scientific understanding as something prefabricated, as a semi-obedient and subsumed material capable of manufacturing and discovering even the impossible. 

To reach this goal, the scientific discourse has been accompanied by reputable methodologies, techniques or mental models, supposedly containing within them the solution for everything moving or observable in the lunar and pre-lunar world. This prejudice, conveniently ingrained in the collective consciousness, is a lie propagated by the self-proclaimed wise men. All scientific knowledge must be preceded by this: a methodological planning based on a strict rigour, the learning of which takes longer than the time needed to discover the problem itself; a supposedly expert technique, favoured by technocrats, that shows their skills in explaining for the sake of explaining, but not in solving and discovering. The same applies to research which, through scientific books and magazines, reveals phenomena in an objective and verifiable way, but whose certainties ultimately collapse because they are rarely actually correct or live up to the asserted facts. To summarise: there is a gaping chasm between the discourse preached by contemporary sciences and the true reality of the living and inert world.

Under the name of these presumed sciences, the scientific discourse has crept into our minds, and is now influencing each of us personally: a new secular priesthood is behind our personal and intimate decisions.

In asserting a proposition of 'science' there is no innocence, much less neutrality: behind the 'scientific discourse' there is, ultimately, a hidden doctrine, a dogma inscribed in the half-truth of scientists.

 It has become extremely difficult to distinguish between science and pseudo-science - the discourse of both have converged: they are one and the same. Farewell to that old idea that man seeks knowledge through nature, an idea formulated long ago by Aristotle. That phrase now seems almost light-hearted, with a high degree of faith. In scientific practice, the expert comes across knowledge without realising it, and even then, stumbling upon it. Meanwhile, the 'scientist' swims in a river of uncertainties, stumbling, poking around and trying to satisfy the manuals of methodologies and protocols of schools that demand reports and data to assuage the anxieties of semi-enlightened investors: in practice, science hides its hard, painful reality. But, before the expert, this new scientific fundamentalism has a name: the science manual. With them come many protocols invented by investors inadequately learned in science. The only remaining option for the reasonable, increasingly rare scientific expert is to confront the problem face on, over-riding the core of the protocols prefabricated by the investor who, in coming from the financial world is moving away from human knowledge.

 The pre-installation of standardised protocols in every discipline of knowledge, anticipating the solution to a contingent issue, has led to an emergence of pseudo-knowledge, organised under principles of supply and demand, profit and loss. Imposed in academies and scientific journals, this system is increasingly supplanting Western knowledge. With no deliberation and much acquiescence, we have allowed a disingenuous tradition to emerge in the contemporary sciences; a tradition rife with hypocrisy, pretending to sail the ship of current science, complete with its protocols, formalities, manuals and pseudo-academies: there is a proven simulation of the scientific discourse that does not allow this situation to be criticised, carved with cunning, duplicity and pretence, to impose a way of acting and proceeding, but not to try to solve or scrutinise reality or to solve real needs. And these simulacra are so deeply rooted in the common mind of the sciences, that they have ended up being consolidated as the real 'truth' of human knowledge. Today, it is these 'truths' that are sold and held up by a great planetary industry of huge profits that seeks money over knowledge. An industry of wise men who are not wise men but investors of, or in, knowledge, and that great investment is threatening our survival on this planet.

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