The Issues of Knowledge Advancement

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To progress collectively, humans work together to create knowledge and come up with new ideas that leads us to gain deeper understanding of the material (Windle). This is further proven by a theory called the Knowledge Building (KB) theory created by Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter which refers to the practice of creating new knowledge through synthesis of ideas and common goals. If this theory is to be believed, the human society is creating knowledge with observations made in the real world. Knowledge is created when there is an amalgamation of common understanding and ideas of a material. Relating back to the opening assertion, human society has evolved in the pursuit of a greater scope for advancing knowledge. Advancing from one common faith in knowledge to another takes place when an observation and research is validated thereby leading to the advancement. However, advancement of knowledge has another side to it that it discards previous common beliefs to advance further. On the other hand, to advance, retaining previous common belief becomes necessary to delve deeper into the context of a validated knowledge thereby raising knowledge issue, “To what extent is it justified to discard a commonly accepted knowledge when an advanced knowledge is discovered. Do the beliefs that lead to the formation of previous knowledge retain any value?”
For an advanced knowledge to be accepted, empirical evidence is required to discard existing knowledge, or to revise certain aspects of that knowledge. “Evidence is an available body of facts or information which indicates whether a belief or proposition is true or valid” (Oxford Dictionary). A Human Science example could be drawn from the assertion above. For the past 15 years, the l...

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...er since it was discovered. As an IB Physics student, I consider the theory of gravitation by Newton to be accurate for the present, having said that the characteristics of the theory might be revised, but the underlying assumption of the existence of gravity will eternally remain true.
In conclusion, knowledge is discovered to propel forward collectively. Alterations in knowledge have been taking place and will take place in the future. However, retaining the value of previously discovered knowledge becomes necessary as it lends a foundation to resume the leftover discovery of knowledge from that particular point or scenario. To sum up, it is justified to discard knowledge and move forward to another as long as the value of previously discovered knowledge is accredited for the fact that it holds value of being the origin to the discovery of advanced knowledge.

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