It is premature to draw any lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic which has just overwhelmed the world. Yet the unprecedented situation in which the whole world has found itself as a result of the deadly virus raises numerous questions. The most persistent ones of them are: when will the pandemic end; what would be its effects on our economies and our individual lives; and will we return to normal life as we knew it only several weeks ago?
The easy way of dealing with the question about the end of the plague is to recall Karl Popper’s argument about the unpredictability of history. As he argued, we cannot predict the future for logical reasons: the course of human history is largely shaped by the growth of human knowledge. However, we cannot predict the future growth of our knowledge by any rational or scientific methods. For if we were to know now what we would know in the future, this would be tantamount to now knowing what we will know only in the future. If this were to happen, future knowledge would be present knowledge, which is impossible. Therefore, it is not possible to predict the course of human history.
The above exercise in philosophical acrobatics does not bring any consolation. For example, it may be read as undermining our hope in the discovery of the vaccination that would protect us from falling ill. Thus, irritatingly, it only drives even deeper the sense of deep uncertainty in which we now live. Yet, despite the fog of uncertainties, and despite the nagging premonition that we are probably only at the beginning of the plague, it is worth considering what use we can make of the knowledge of the pandemic, and of ourselves, which we already have at our disposal.
