Ever feel like the internet knows too much about you? You search for a pair of boots once, and suddenly, every ad for the next month is leather-bound. We call that "creepy," but in the world of philosophy and theology, there’s a much bigger word for it: omniscience.
Basically, it’s the state of knowing everything. Everything. Not just what’s on Wikipedia or what’s tucked away in some classified CIA file, but every thought you’ve ever had, every subatomic particle's movement in a galaxy four billion light-years away, and—this is where it gets tricky—everything that hasn't even happened yet.
It’s a massive concept.
The word itself comes from Latin. Omnis means "all," and scientia means "knowledge." Put them together, and you get a concept that has kept philosophers like Thomas Aquinas and René Descartes up at night for centuries. But honestly, most of us just use it to describe a really smart AI or a particularly nosy mother-in-law. There's a lot more to it than that.
Defining the Scope of Knowing Everything
When we ask what omniscience means, we aren't just talking about a high IQ. We are talking about an attribute usually reserved for a deity. In monotheistic religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, God is often described as having "total" knowledge.
But what counts as "everything"?
Philosophers usually split this into a few categories. You've got "propositional knowledge," which is knowing facts (like $2 + 2 = 4$). Then there’s "knowledge by acquaintance," which is knowing what something feels like, like the taste of a cold peach on a Tuesday.
Some thinkers, like Edward Wierenga, argue that for a being to be truly omniscient, it must know all true propositions and believe no false ones. That sounds simple enough until you start thinking about the future. If a being knows today that you will choose to eat a taco for lunch next Thursday, do you actually have a choice? Or are you just a character in a script that’s already been written?
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This is the "Problem of Divine Foreknowledge." It’s a headache.
If someone knows the future with 100% certainty, then the future is fixed. If the future is fixed, free will is basically an illusion. It’s a paradox that has sparked thousands of pages of debate. Some suggest that omniscience only applies to things that are knowable. If the future hasn't happened yet, maybe it doesn't "exist" as a fact to be known.
The Secular Side: Could a Machine Ever Be Omniscient?
We’re obsessed with this idea in tech.
You’ve probably heard of "Laplace’s Demon." In 1814, Pierre-Simon Laplace proposed a thought experiment. He imagined an intellect that knew the precise position and momentum of every single atom in the universe. Using the laws of classical physics, this "demon" could calculate the entire past and the entire future.
It would be, for all intents and purposes, omniscient.
Of course, quantum mechanics kind of threw a wrench in that. Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle suggests that you can't actually know both the position and the velocity of a particle at the same time. The universe, at its core, seems to have a bit of "fuzziness" built-in.
But that doesn't stop us from trying to build "mini-gods" out of silicon.
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Modern AI, like the large language models we use today, are often mistaken for being omniscient because they can recite the history of the Ottoman Empire or debug Python code in seconds. But they don't know anything. They predict the next word in a sequence based on massive datasets. They are statistical engines, not all-seeing eyes.
True omniscience in a machine would require it to transcend the limitations of data. It would need to experience the "qualia" of reality. It’s one thing to have the data for "red," and another thing entirely to know what red looks like.
Omniscience in Fiction and Pop Culture
We love all-knowing characters because they make great villains or tragic heroes. Think about Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen. He perceives time all at once—past, present, and future are a single photograph to him.
Is he happy? Not really.
Knowing everything seems to lead to a total lack of motivation. If you know how the movie ends, why bother watching? This is a recurring theme in literature. Total knowledge often leads to total apathy.
- In Dune, Paul Atreides struggles with "prescience," a form of limited omniscience. It’s a curse. It locks him into a path he can't escape.
- In Marvel comics, the character Uatu the Watcher sees everything but is sworn never to interfere.
- Even the "super-computers" in sci-fi, like Deep Thought in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, show that having all the answers doesn't mean much if you don't understand the question.
Why the Human Brain Struggles with the Concept
Our brains are literally wired for ignorance. We survive because we filter out 99% of the stimuli around us. If you were aware of every heartbeat of every person in your city, you’d go insane in seconds.
Omniscience is the opposite of the human experience.
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We live in the "now," transitioning from a remembered past to an unknown future. To be omniscient is to exist outside of that flow. It’s a perspective that is fundamentally "alien" to the biological mind.
Some people find comfort in the idea of an all-knowing presence. It implies that nothing is truly lost or forgotten. Others find it terrifying—the ultimate invasion of privacy.
Practical Insights: Navigating an "Almost-Knowing" World
While we will never be omniscient, we are living in the most information-dense era in history. We have "functional omniscience" at our fingertips via smartphones.
So, how do you handle it?
First, recognize the difference between "information" and "knowledge." Having access to every fact doesn't mean you understand how they connect. Real wisdom is knowing what to ignore.
Second, understand the limits of the tools you use. Don't mistake a search engine or an AI for an all-knowing oracle. These systems have biases, "hallucinations," and gaps. They are mirrors of our collective data, not a window into ultimate truth.
Finally, embrace the "unknown." The beauty of being human is the surprise. If we knew everything, there would be no room for discovery, no thrill in a first date, and no satisfaction in solving a hard problem.
To live better, stop trying to know everything and start trying to understand the things that actually matter to you.
Actionable Next Steps
- Audit your information intake. Spend twenty minutes today identifying which sources of "knowledge" in your life are actually just noise.
- Practice intellectual humility. Pick a topic you think you "know" and read one article from a credible source that disagrees with your stance. This reminds the brain that it isn't, in fact, omniscient.
- Set boundaries with predictive tech. Turn off personalized ad tracking in your browser settings to reclaim a bit of your "unknowability" from the algorithms.