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short note on risk assessment
five differences between belief and knowledge
short note on risk assessment
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The world evolves around us and we evolve around it. Knowledge as we know may develop and change over a period of time. Knowledge in its working definition is information passing from one person to another by using any sort of communication, then by using our given senses to take information, which is kept in our minds as memories for future use as a knowledge- as a true belief, truth in its definition is a fact that has been proven or a belief that can be accepted as correct. The knowledge we understand off can overtake some of the other ideas that we have found. We may “accept” what we learn at first because we would not have any proof or evidence that contradicts against it and upon rationalisation. Based on our empirical experience of the world, it can be described as a way of justifying what is to be right with quantifiable evidence. “Discarded” can be defined as the neglected knowledge or no longer reliable in after experimentation or through a process of rationalisation. According to the title, knowledge seems useful yet we neglect some of it and refine it to make it become a new knowledge by based on further discoveries. As the foundation of knowledge is relied on past experiences and observations therefore the knowledge issue raised is “To what extent does our past experiences affect our decisions on what knowledge we accept? The title states that we may reject knowledge as we find new and developed theories or issues. In the contrary we still use the discarded knowledge to deduce what is to be correct. The idea of a paradigm shift arises when we find a new knowledge and observe around the concept then when we find a mistake or a new deduction we leap into another knowledge or a concept and that leap is called a paradigm ...
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Looking at this in a different perspective, we do not discard all the knowledge we know
Overall, this essay I have made claims that history is what makes us who we are by learning through mistakes that are regarded as to be “discarded” knowledge. When it comes to Natural sciences we cannot always look back at the discarded knowledge but rather start from it because starting from the beginning will just bring us to back where we were. “There are many hypotheses in science, which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the apertures to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.” This quotes says it all. This has led me to a new knowledge issue: To what extent does progress and our mistakes from the past allow us to come closer to truth?
Consider this: a random doctor comes up to you, professing to have a cure for any and all kinds of viruses. He presents a syringe of the “antidote”, he has not provided background nor the results of his experimentation. Would you take the antidote? Within a person's life time, there will be various moments of skepticism. Skepticism can be both beneficial and detrimental, it can also lead to the arising of various knowledge claims. One of the ways by, which a person can gain knowledge is through their level of skepticism. Some knowledge claims that can arise as a result of too much or too little skepticism include; does this approach allow for knowledge to be gained with some degree of certainty? Is this approach to gaining knowledge reliable? Within the various areas of knowledge, the manner in which we absorb the information and knowledge provided can vary. With some areas of knowledge, the information we gain we may take in without questioning. In other areas of knowledge, we might take in the information with a grain of salt; presenting our skepticism. My thesis is that while skepticism can be a beneficial approach to gaining knowledge in the AOKs of the natural sciences and history, it can also be detrimental, based on the impact the AOK has on the person observing it, as well as the perspective of the person. The subsequent knowledge issues that arise as a result, will need to be analyzed in order for me to be able to evaluate the “skeptics” approach in the AOKs of natural science and history.
... previous knowledge critically in order to decide if that knowledge is really worth of abundance. Luckily there are some scientists who later discover that discarded knowledge and takes it as a basis for their further research (like in Leibniz – Einstein case) that helps to establish new aspects of knowledge.
Knowledge that is acquired and accepted as true today is constantly changing. This is because we curious humans are always generating questions that spark the production of newly conceived ideas and theories. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.” While these ideas may be accepted as relevant and reliable currently and can be useful tools for acquiring newer knowledge, it is easy to assume that pre-existing knowledge has been discarded. This is not always necessarily true, but rather that pre-existing knowledge is revisited and improved upon. With the areas of knowledge natural sciences and human sciences, knowledge is acquired through different ways, even though they are both classified as a science. With this, knowledge issues may arise within these two areas of knowledge in which a consideration of pertaining ways of knowing must be included.
Before Kuhn’s book was written, the commonly held position by scientists and philosophers of science, such as Mach and Otswald , about the structure of science; was that it involved linear progression as a result of an incremental accumulation of knowledge from the activities undertaken by members of the scientific community. They thought that as generations of scientists observed more and more, their understanding of a particular scientific fact would become better refined through an ever growing stockpile of facts, theories and methods. The aim of the historian of science would be to pin point the man and the moment in time a further discovery was made; whilst also describing the obstacles that inhibited scientific progression.
There’s always a new theory, experiment, or work that can prove a new stance. With the progression of time, knowledge can sometimes be discarded. But what is knowledge? And what kind of factors can impact it which leads to it being discarded? Knowledge is information centered by a concept that conveys a message and can be acquired through learning or memory. Many different factors can have an effect on whether someone accepts information as knowledge or knowledgeable. The biggest impacts are biases. Some are not able to detect their own personal biases, which are influenced by culture, gender, race, religion, etc., and therefore can discard knowledge based on their experiences. Which brings me to another factor, experience is what can change the mind of a knower. It can influence him or her to accept or not accept information. Acceptance is connoted differently than from what it used to be; just because one accepts something, does not necessarily imply that they believe it. For example, I accept that many cultures around the world believe in arranged marriages; however, I do not consider it to be an ethical act. Overall, perception can always be influenced. Today I say that being forced into marriage is wrong, the next day I could be doing the same with my own child. The point is that one will never be able to tell what they will consider to be knowledge. In this essay, the two areas of knowledge I will focus on, in agreement with the quote, “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow,” are history and human sciences.
Our knowledge is indeed an interpretation of our experiences and facts that we have learned or acquired throughout life. Nonetheless, it is impossible to have a full knowledge of everything or to, at least, try to know everything because knowledge is so broad and extensive that it makes this task quite impossible. Therefore, we store our knowledge in structures so we can navigate through it. It is important to have in mind that there is not absolute knowledge because the acquisition of it is also biased by our different ways of knowing such as emotion and reason. Thus, this statement is to a large extent true that our knowledge is a collection of scraps and those new fragments that are found can alter our entire design of our knowledge. For example in natural sciences, theories and laws of physics, biology, and chemistry can modify the way that we explain natural and artificial events because our world is in constant change, so does technology, which leads scientists and researchers to new finding, this might complement the knowledge that we already know or it might also change it drastically. Furthermore, in history new archeological findings can contradict and ultimately alter our formal conception of the events that have happened in the past. On the other hand, this statement can be somehow not truth, in a small extent, because regardless of new findings, these, so called, new information can be limited to the public thus not leading to an open overview of the subject. For instance, in history, new archeological findings are limited to the public thus they are not fully aware of the situation and past events that might have happened. While, in natural sciences is different because the issue relies on the people who keep believ...
that we learned is used as a brick to build new facts on it and that is how the knowledge progresses and grows.
Traditionally the word knowledge conjures thoughts of comprehension, intelligence, discovery, realization and information. The following essay is aimed at exploring the notion that knowledge develops through time as well as the way reasoning and perception make the knowledge humans have today much more advanced. Throughout the decades disagreements and curiosity were key for new findings, which eventually led to the discarding of other realizations made in the past. Knowledge is defined as “facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject” (Knowledge). In my opinion, I would also interpret that; knowledge is regarding the accuracy of our acquaintance with existence, more importantly how accurately our concepts and statements represent existence. I believe that the two ways of knowing, reason and perception have greatly helped the development of knowledge in both history and the naturals sciences, but to what extent has knowledge been discarded due to new findings?
...r it becomes to discard. The fact that there is the possibility of knowledge getting discarded suggests that perhaps it should not have been accepted in the first place. This begs the question: is knowledge accepted too easily? More often than not, one requires an adequate amount of evidence and facts to accept something as true. However, sometimes there is no evidence and it is impossible to prove something true, yet it is still accepted as knowledge, as is in the case of many theories. This occurs mostly in the sciences, because many times it is difficult to substantiate scientific knowledge. In order to avoid this never-ending cycle of accepting and discarding knowledge, perhaps the standard of accepting knowledge as true should be raised. But sometimes when something is proven false, it leads to finding the truth, so maybe the standard should remain where it is.
“That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.” The pursuit of any given knowledge may or may not change over time if contradictions are stated and proved. While looking at the pursuit of knowledge, the perception that focalizes on the specific subject can be seen as reliable or unreliable due to bias or reason. Knowledge is also different in different fields of study. The use of reason will define certain things for an eternity, while others are made out of emotion. The time period of the relating to the acquiring of the “modern” knowledge could impact the resolution, appointing the fact that history has its own way of forming new concepts to old ideas. In connection to the history aspect, the perception of ideas during that time period will affect future references to the said concept.
‘It is more important to discover new ways of thinking about what is already known than to discover new data or facts’. To what extent would you agree with this claim?
In the world we live in, there are constantly new experiences under investigation, for which previous knowledge may not explain in our pursuit of absolute knowledge. From previous knowledge of a similar experience we attempt to understand the new experience, however our previously understood knowledge may not explain the experience, and therefore is discarded for new discoveries. In the natural sciences, there are many theories and models, which are created to explain experiences, that become redundant. These theories and models are not able to explain new experiences and therefore must be supplanted by new discoveries, which are able to explain the experience. This may be due to the knower not being able to formulate a theory or model because of an experience, which had not yet been observed. In human science, experiences play a large influence on the knowledge available, as it is largely based on trends from various sources, if the trend experiences a change in the future, the knowledge becomes false and muse be repudiated. I believe that old knowledge is often replaced by new discoveries. However, it does not always directly replace old knowledge and may use it as a stepping stone, or just replaces old knowledge.
Knowledge has a preliminary definition which is that it is justified true belief. Due to its dynamic nature, knowledge is subject to review and revision over time. Although, we may believe we have objective facts from various perceptions over time, such facts become re-interpreted in light of improved evidence, findings or technology and instigates new knowledge. This raises the questions, To what extent is knowledge provisional? and In what ways does the rise of new evidence give us a good reason to discard our old knowledge? This new knowledge can be gained in any of the different areas of knowledge, by considering the two areas of knowledge; History and Natural Sciences, I will be able to tackle these knowledge issues since they both offer more objective, yet regularly updated knowledge, which is crucial in order to explore this statement. I believe that rather than discarding knowledge we build upon it and in doing so access better knowledge, as well as getting closer to the truth.
Ever wonder how the world would be today only if our great researchers implemented a different attitude towards their experiments? It is possible that the results would remain same. However, some argue that the consequences may be altered. Nonetheless, this does not make the earlier learned knowledge valued less or false, just supplementary. Abraham Maslow’s theory challenges nearly all ways of knowing, suggesting that if we limit our thinking, the outcomes remain homogenous, therefore, limiting the amount of knowledge we acquire. Dilemmas are mentioned in order to repudiate from the opinions that are profoundly accepted in the society. If Newton had eaten that apple, instead of using it as a tool to apply the theory of attraction, he may not have exposed gravity. Because he had more tools than a mere hammer and he was sagacious enough to expand his philosophy beyond hunger, he made such an innovation. It is widely claimed that inventions are accidental. In fact, all the chemical elements in the famous periodic table are a result of different tactics towards scientist’s research. As ToK teaches us that there is no possible end to a situation for it is influenced by the perceptive skills of the arguers. There is never a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or the ‘ultimate answer’ in the conflict, but the eminence of rationalization is what poises the deliberation. This suggestion explains that there is always that one more way to approach the conclusion. Thus, pursuit of knowledge habitually requires dissimilar ways of knowing for it lengthens the verdict.