Roadside Picnic - book review

This is one of the few sci-fi books with more philosophical undertones than sci-fi. It's a short and thought-provoking read, although it may seem kind of anti-climactic at the end, but the story's beauty lies in its simplicity. Although there are quite a few different concepts/theories hidden between the lines, but 1 that I found profound and central to the story is this -

Most of us think that man has an insatiable desire for knowledge. But this statement is too simplistic and naive. The man that we refer to in this statement, is the common man. The common man does have an insatiable desire for understanding but not necessarily knowledge. There is a subtle difference. Knowledge is more absolute and objective in nature when compared to understanding. Most of us seek to understand things that we don't understand, and most of us are content with a dumbed down or simplified answer to our questions, it's enough to sustain us through out our life. For example the question of God - most people are either happy with believing that there is a supreme being that holds all the reins to our lives or there is no such thing as God, we are the masters of our own fate. There maybe only a handful of people who are ready to do whatever it takes to find a real answer to this question. And those handful of people are faced with another insurmountable proposition - Can the question be answered within the limits of our existing knowledge and our capacity for understanding.To elaborate this further - any physics or engineering student will tell you that a perpetual motion machine is impossible, because it violates the 1st law of thermodynamics. Why is our science so sure about this? Because we haven't yet seen any phenomena that defies the 1st law and hence we never felt the need to question it. But what if we suddenly encounter a PMM? Does that mean our assumption was wrong? If it was wrong then what is the right explanation and can that be understood with our current physical understanding of the universe? But nevertheless, just because we can't understand something does not mean it can't exist.

To sum up, we search for answers to different questions throughout our lives, but more often we make/create answers for those questions ourselves.

A side note - The PMM was just an example from my end, I am not very sure, there actually maybe unquestionable scientific evidence defying its existence. But the author has used instances like this in his book, and I think he is urging us to not restrict our thinking to things that we already know. Remember when Einstein first came up with the theory of relativity, nobody believed him because nobody else could think the way he did. But with time he was proven right and we were able to expand our thinking to embrace a relativistic world.