Mason Chapter 4

"Our understanding of nature is not a direct vision but an interpretation mediated through our concepts, marshaled by our reason. Nature in itself is unknowable. The fact that we understand cannot be surprising because, in short, our understanding makes for us the only nature that we can understand" (64).

Isn't Mason saying two different things here? 1) There exists some objective reality beyond our comprehension, 2) nature is self-created or projected. Is he affirming both? In the case of the second, wouldn't we have a perfect understanding of nature, since it is created by the understanding itself? Could the understanding have an "amnesic episode" after it creates nature, and intellectual inquiry is nothing but the process of piecing it all together? The intelligibility of nature would make sense from this standpoint, since the mind is just "remembering" what it lost.