Academics around the world have announced that knowledge is now complete, and that all further inquiry into problems will not be necessary.
The findings were announced at an award ceremony simultaneously held at Harvard, Oxford, and Beijing Universities last night, and mark the end of humanity’s search to discover and understand the mysteries.
Speaking at the ceremony at Oxford, Professor Roger Scruton, noted Conservative and aesthetics fan, said that, “It is with great pleasure that I announce that knowledge is now complete. The questions have been answered, and the sums have been done. If it isn’t in a book now, then it simply isn’t a thing….Also I was right when I told the progressives we didn’t need to broaden the admissions pool. ”
The announcement has been met with surprise in some quarters of the Academy, as it emerges that several thousand academics believed they were still working at problems that needed to be solved.
“I must say this has come as a surprise,” said John McDonald, Professor of Children’s Literature at the University of Sinkingship. “I thought my work toward a hermeneutics of the centipede in early 1905 Northern Irish children’s literature would add to humanity’s total knowledge, but it appears that it has either already been done, or doesn’t count as a thing that people need to know.”
“I have clearly not been paying attention,” said Mortono Fendelson, Professor of Silence-Is-Bliss at McGall University. “I thought my work was still of use.”
Other academics have welcomed the news, and suggested that given that they “did their job, like, 100 per cent” they should be “richly rewarded in this life and all of the lives with tokens of your appreciation and yachts and other gifts that it is becoming of inferiors to donate to their natural superiors.”
Meanwhile theoretical physicists are baffled by the announcement, coming as it does while they are still searching for the mysteries of the universe and creation using large pieces of equipment.
“We have been building some very expensive machines, some very fucking expensive machines,” said William B. McAlfred, Head of Finding-the-Answer at C.E.R.N. “We have put those very fucking expensive machines deep in the ground, deep under rock and dirt, which is itself not an inexpensive venture. We have since been looking at these machines literally non-stop for the last year, and trying to make the numbers, which are very big and hard to count – numbers with lots of digits to the right of the decimal point – add up. This has not been easy, and we haven’t succeeded yet. But apparently we needn’t have bothered….[yes] this is quite a surprise.”
When quizzed on how the completion of knowledge could have happened with physicists still busily attempting to discover the origin of the universe and purpose of life – problems which are surely important to solve – McAlfred was baffled.
“I don’t know. We must have left the answer in a book somewhere.”
Philosophy departments have been sent into a wild neo-existential tailspin by the news.
“If we already have it, then why do we have questions? We must have left the answer somewhere. But if we did that, and we don’t know where, then are we allowed to ask where we left the answers? But that’s a question. Is the answer buried in our mind? Is that a question? Fuck,” said Harvard Professor and Pathetic Apologist for Empire John Rawls, before exploding into a haze of question marks and italicized words.
Of course, some academics are dismayed that the completion of knowledge renders all their hopes and dreams futile and totally worthless.
“I knew I couldn’t be another Foucault,” said Dr. Angajo. “I knew I wasn’t destined to revolutionize my field and provoke a new generation of academics to take up difficult ethical and historical questions…but…I just thought I could do my bit. I’m devastated. I just hope there is another universe out there that needs knowledge…but then, if there is we’d already know about it. Help.”
Some of the most disappointed academics hail from China, a country which has never won a Nobel Prize despite “giving the West such a huge leg up back in the day.”
“Papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and printing, but no Nobel,” said one Chinese academic who declined to be named. “It is time.”
In other news, McGall Principal Heatha Mama-Boom has announced that, despite the solution to all of the problems universities were only created to solve being found, McGall would be increasing the number of upper administration roles next year.
“Just because I’m leaving doesn’t mean we can’t keep spending your money on fine 1948 Bordeaux,” said HMB.