In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant famously distinguished between phenomena, the world as it appears to us, and noumena, the thing-in-itself, which eludes direct human comprehension. Phenomena are mediated by our senses and shaped by the structures of our mind; noumena remain the true reality, accessible only through inference, never full perception. Surprisingly, this philosophical distinction resonates deeply with the everyday dilemmas faced by nephrologists.
