Reference

Thank you, goldmud. So you think they refer to '(to be) known'?

Plus, how would you rewite the elliptic 'if....' into 'if S is supposed to...'?

Taka, Mr. M already gave you the answer. Ellipsis is an intended omission of words from a grammatical sentence. In ellipsis, the writer expects his/her readers/listeners to supply appropriate words to remake the sentence grammatical. The sentence thus made by a reader does not need to be exactly the same as the writer's original sentence. It can be varied to a certain extent depending on how the reader takes the sense.

My try is like:

Today, everything is supposed to be known --- if (anything is) not known to us, then (we will suppose it is known) to some expert whose business is to know what we don't know.

Davkett wrote:

Maybe because it's out of context, Taka, I don't really get the meaning of this sentence.

Right, davkett.

So here is the original:

If it is true that the ability to be puzzled is the beginning of wisdom, then this truth is a sad commentary on the wisdom of modern man. Whatever the merits of our high degree of literary and universal education, we have lost the gift for being puzzled. Everything is supposed to be known---if not to ourselves then to some specialist whose business is to know what we do not know. In fact, to be puzzled is embarrassing, a sign of intellectual inferiority. Even children are rarely surprised, or at least they try not to show that they are; and as we grow older we gradually lose the ability to be surprised. To have the right answers seems all-important; to ask the right question is considered insignificant by comparison.

Contextually, I think the supposition, or the premise, here is that every modern man, even a child, is a man of knowledge. So, it seems to me that ''Everything is supposed to be known---if not to ourselves then...' means something like:

 'Everything is supposed to be known to everyone today in this modern world. If you say that that suppositon is too general---I don't think it is, though---then that premise should apply at least to some specialist whose business is...'

Thanks for the context, Taka.  I think the following version might clear up the conceptual problem I have with the sentence (even in its context).

Today, everything is supposed to be known--if not to us then to the aggregate of all the specialists whose business it is to know what we ourselves do not know.

I do sympathize with the author's lament.  The idea that whatever I don't personally know will be known by one or another specialist discredits the existence of unknowable things, and even more absurd, dismisses the idea that things unknowable today might be knowable tomorrow.

I find the author's thesis here a bit over-stated, though.  I wonder on what basis this view of today's world is hypothesized.

 

How about:

Everything is supposed to be known (to someone or other) – if (it is) not (known) to ourselves, then (it is known) to some specialist whose business is to know what we do not know.

So:

It is assumed that everything is known either to ourselves or to some specialist whose business it is to know what we do not know.

MrP