Melvyn Bragg recently gave a lecture at the Cheltenham Literature Festival about his intriguing new book Love Without End: A Story of Heloise and Abelard about the life of radical twelfth century scholars Héloïse and Peter Abelard. Afterwards, a member of the audience asked Bragg if he knew what had happened to their son Astrolabe. In response he stated that he did not, and he believed that it would take a trained historian who could speak multiple European languages around five years to acquire sufficient information from the archives, libraries and human minds of the world to piece together the life of Astrolabe.
In a world of ubiquitous global internet, Wikipedia, and totally unprecedented access to knowledge for the average person, it’s a somewhat sobering thought to realise that real Truth is still so hard to access.
Bragg is not suggesting that the life experiences of Astrolabe are unknowable, he is merely saying that such knowledge is hidden away in places that require vast amounts of time to discover.
In other words, the Truth is out there for those who are determined to seek it out, but the internet has not provided us with the panacea of Truth-discovery we sometimes think it has and it will take much more time and effort than most people are willing to dedicate in order to reveal real unmitigated Truth.
Fractalis - An ongoing journal 