Draw a circle on paper. Inside it, write the word ‘knowledge’, for instance, and the word ‘faith’ outside it. Or, if you want to follow the example of ancient thinkers, the words ‘physics’ and ‘metaphysics’. Continue the cartoon by drawing a slightly larger circle on a new piece of paper. As our knowledge grows, the circle gets bigger and bigger. Lightning bolts are bursts of electricity, not expressions of the wrath of gods. Both the universe and life have developed over billions of years; they did not just emerge as complete. Gik = 8Tik and so on. The circle widens.

What does the last panel of the cartoon look like? Has the circle stopped growing? Will we one day reach the limits of knowledge beyond which the brain of Homo Sapiens could never extend? You can teach a dog many tricks, but not modern poetry or the theory of relativity. So why would a human being, descended from the trees a mere cosmic blink of an eye ago, be a fundamentally different animal? Perhaps the outer area is infinite, and a finite circle can never enclose it? Or has the circle expanded to fill the entire panel, has physics swallowed up all of metaphysics? Can we ever come to know everything, or will we always see reality as a reflection, as shadows on the cave walls?

Here, in the most simplified form, is the most fundamental of all questions: the nature of reality. Thousands of years of thinking have not brought up an answer – or rather, there are so many answers that everyone is bound to find one they like. Christoffer and Kaisa Leka write and draw about this ultimate question as well.​​​​ For eight hundred pages, they go around the circumference of the circle, looking at times inside it and at times outside. They are also unable to give an answer, but time after time, they manage to remind us that if there are no certain answers, it would behove us to show a little more humility, as well as understanding and acceptance of those who think and believe differently. One would think that even a Homo Sapiens could get their head around this truth.

Esko Valtaoja
Professor emeritus,
University of Turku, PhD