We pointed out that our knowledge of the nature of spacetime was essentially analytic in origin (via mathematics) while our minds seemed to fail to make a synthetic representation of it see : L’espace-temps comme paradigme de notre existence : au-delà de l’éternité ! 26/10/25
This was presented as a paradox, because what one human activity failed to represent (synthesis), another human activity achieved (analysis).
It seemed to be a great success for our minds, except that we can wonder if these two types of knowledge have the same value!
Thus, if I take the image of a painting made by an artist, I can describe it analytically, the nature of the characters, their positions, the landscape, the framing, the colors, the technique used, etc.
But, with this, do I have a synthetic knowledge of the painting?
We can doubt it because listing the list of this information (the phenomenon in physics) does not allow the viewer to access what the artist wanted to express in his painting, which is nevertheless the essential character of the work, the rest being only means to do so.
The goal of the artist, (at least we can assume it for some), beyond these means, is to induce a way for grasping the true purpose of his work, beyond these appearances.
It may be the same for our scientific knowledge, we understand the nature of the parameters and their relations (the elements of the phenomenon) but perhaps, failing to get a synthetic view, we don’t understand the nature of the object producing these parameters.
Notwithstanding with some doubt about this, when assuming it, this can help us to access the nature and scope of our knowledge. If the argument unfortunately does not have a clear heuristic character, it nevertheless encourages rigor by constraining the scope of our knowledge.