O Magnum Mysterium

This is a painting I have just finished. Its provisional title is Dragnet. The photo colour is not very accurate, being too much in the yellow and red, which in itself serves to illustrate ideas I've been pursuing, of trying to understand underlying structures and processes of phenomena. In this case there is an objective basis for the colour difference, just as there is for the appearance of this computer screen.The reasons for specific phenomena can often be investigated, even when specialised knowledge is required.

Knowledge has become more and more specialised and technical; generalisations more and more frowned on or ignored, so I'm wondering if my search for general principles is a search for a chimera. Perhaps an overall explanation can only be a mental construct. Or perhaps the underlying principles are vast, soul-less and dreary, like some Kafka-esque bureacracy. One such, with apologies to mathematicians, is that the universe is mathematical; after all, elements are built up in a regular sequence which we identify in the Periodic Table, and mathematical relationships apply between (all?) physical bodies. However, mathematics, science and philosophy, let alone the arts, all arise from our perceptions of the world. A century ago most people would have accepted these perceptions as accurate representations of the world, but this point of view has been increasingly challenged throughout the 20th century, to the point where now most disciplines are regarded by the hardline challengers as 'social constructs'.

I'm an old-fashioned realist; I consider the existence of the world to be independent of my view of it, and susceptible to being understood in what was termed an 'objective' way. But still I am forced to take account of subjectivity, and remind myself of the Kantian distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal world, ie the world as experienced, and the world as it is 'in itself'. Thus we may never be able to understand the fundamentally underlying structures and causes of things, but always have to rely on human interpretations and constructs.
The post-modernist pioneer Jean-Francois Lyotard maintained a stout opposition to the kind of generalisation or 'grand narrative' that I seem to be looking for, and his writings had a strong influence on the mentality prevalent today.