Currently obsessing over Kaveh and Alhaitham's core disagreement on epistemological question of what truth and knowledge is. The way I read their character stories, Alhaitham believes that the truth exists on a pure level in the world around us, and that language and cultural assumptions hinder researchers from seeing that truth for what it is. That's why he keeps to himself, using his sharp mind to earnestly research his topics of interest with the sole motivation of finding a truth that is untainted by such external factors. Kaveh, on the other hand, rejects the concept of an objective truth, believing that knowledge cannot exist without a subject, and that postulating an objective truth is to willfully disguise the subject, the researcher. True wisdom, Kaveh believes, can only exist intersubjectively, when enough people come together to find that truth and agree on it. This fundamental difference was what precipitated their fallout.
When Nahida says that Kaveh is the person who understands best what it means for Sumeru to be a Nation of Wisdom, I believe this is what she's talking about; for there to be a Nation of Wisdom, it's not enough for one brilliant researcher to take home there. Their wisdom will die with them. But if you cultivate an interpersonal endeavor for knowledge, you will get a nation of truthseekers, and the wisdom that is accumulated will transcend the lifespans of the individual humans that contributed to its discovery. The heartbreaking part is that this very understanding is what drives Kaveh to overexert himself to prove the merits of his ideas to the rest of the world, because he's hopelessly trying to cultivate intersubjective understanding in a nation where very few have such an honest desire to cultivate wisdom, preferring to have knowledge fed to them through the Akasha just to graduate and move up in the social hierarchy.
The only person who truly engages in such an intersubjective back-and-forth with Kaveh, is Alhaitham.
