Evrim Tekin

Open questions

Some questions are worth more than quick answers.

What it is

Open questions are the unfinished edges of thinking. Some are scientific: most of the universe’s matter and energy is of a kind nobody has identified. Some are about knowledge itself: many published findings fail when experiments are repeated.

Holding a question without rushing to a conclusion is a skill. This world keeps the questions that this site would rather leave open than answer badly.

Updated 5 November 2026 · 2 sourced facts

Illustration
A generative picture of the idea; it shows no data.

Ideas to carry

  1. 1

    Negative capability

    Keats’s phrase for staying with uncertainty without grasping for answers.

  2. 2

    Good questions travel

    A sharp question can outlive every answer given to it.

  3. 3

    Unfinished is honest

    “I do not know yet” is more useful than a confident guess.

Established What we know

  1. ESA’s Euclid mission was launched to map the dark universe, because the nature of dark matter and dark energy is unknown.[1]
  2. A large 2015 effort to repeat 100 psychology studies found that only about a third to two-fifths reproduced the original results.[2]

Interpretation The older lens · Zen and tarot

Zen koans are questions built to defeat ordinary logic; the Fool of the tarot steps forward without knowing where.

Reading

  1. 1228The Gateless GateWumen Huikai
  2. 1817Letter on negative capabilityJohn Keats
  3. 1929Letters to a Young PoetRainer Maria Rilke

Me: I will figure out the meaning of life

Also me: still deciding what to have for dinner

Made in-house, for fun.

Connected subjects, projects and writing

Sources

  1. Euclid European Space Agency. Checked 5 Nov 2026.
  2. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science Science, 2015. Checked 5 Nov 2026.