On the unknown

Seneca wrote his letters late in life, in retreat from the court of Nero, a place where certainty was a form of danger and a man's grasp of the world could not save him from its cruelty. He returned often to a humbling idea: that we are not born knowing, only born able to learn. The mind is not a finished house but an open field. What we call wisdom is the slow work of cultivating what was only ever given to us as possibility. He wanted Lucilius to hold his conclusions lightly, and to keep looking.

This week scientists aboard a research vessel reported 31 brand-new species found in international waters off the coast of Brazil, in just two weeks. They were found not on the seafloor or a coral reef but in the ocean's midwater, the vast open water between the sunlit surface and the seafloor. It is the largest habitat on Earth, and we are only beginning to see into it. The seeds Seneca described are still mostly seeds. Most of what exists has not yet met a human eye.