That which Is Accepted as Knowledge Todays Is Sometimes Discarded Tomorrow

Human beings are much of a strange creature – many are attracted by what the majority of the

population accepts as “knowledge” and follow this path for many years without asking themselves the

reason why it is said to be that way. Others prefer completing their own “knowledge” by referring to an

entity which is thought to be superior to all the living on Earth. Then there are those which are open

minded, which stand out from the crowd, whose own curiosity takes the lead into finding out the

secrets of the world. What the question is implying, is the fact that sometimes a statement is said to be a

fact, a principle or the truth, entering our own classification of “knowledge”. On the other hand, this

could also be “discarded” in future, therefore left a side, because something else has replaced it, or just

simply we are ignoring it to follow another path.

In every century, people have thought they understood the universe at last, and in every century they

were proved to be wrong. If this pattern keeps on following, then we can say that our modern

“knowledge” is wrong. Socrates was proclaimed by the Delphic oracle, the wisest man in Greece, and

to this, he responded: “If I am the wisest, it is because I alone know than I know nothing.”1

implies that he is saying that he is very foolish as he was under the impression he knew a great amount

of “knowledge”. When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When they thought the

Earth was spherical, this theory was discarded again. Information and knowledge is constantly

evolving, false information leads to a more accurate theory, which could then turn out to be false again.

However, the issue that rises here is that “right” and “wrong” are not ...

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...ledge” which was accepted

as accurate, and then discarded in favour of a new theory, which was based on new information that

explained the phenomena in an entirely new and more accurate way. However, the previous solution

was almost a block in a continuously constructed building of knowledge. Even when a block was

completely removed and ignored due to it's instability, it often motivated new lines of inquiry to replace

it once again. Humans have the ability to grow up learning a certain line of reasoning by explaining

something, by judging it and seeing its flaws. Inquiry diverges towards potentially more accurate

answers; even if the previous one was slightly right, in turn a new analysis was even more directly

derived from it.

Works Cited

K. Frazie, The Skeptical Inquirer, United States: Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, Fall

1989, Vol. 14, No. 1