Discovering New Knowledge in Natural Science and History

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When trying to understand the title of “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow”, then the first thing that I deliberated was the evolution of theories and concepts. One can say that once a new discovery of a theory or concept has been completed, then the old one would most likely be discarded and no long be accepted as knowledge. However, one can also argue that old theories or concepts are not always discarded but evolved, as it becomes a part of the new theory. It really depends on how one defines discarded. In this essay I will be focusing on the areas of knowledge of natural science and history because there are many knowledge issues discarded in those two areas, as scientists and historians constantly discover new theories and truths about the past. In this Theory of Knowledge essay I will be discussing the new findings of skulls in Georgia and how the old theory of human evolution could be discarded. I will also be discussing the relativity of theories being wrong and the faults in deduction and the scientific method.

Natural science belongs to the newer era of knowledge. The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century is the core of everything scientific we are to believe in today’s society. Great scientists like Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin along with many others have in little more than three centuries discovered the fundamental laws of gravity, the 92 elements of the periodic table, the evolutionary theory and many other discoveries, all accepted as knowledge today. Nonetheless, scientific theories having been knowledge in the past have been discarded in newer times. Since natural science has a history of constantly changing over time, then one might question how far it really...

... middle of paper ...

... theories must have been appropriately accurate in order for advances to be made. From this we can conclude that theories of today might be considered wrong, being discarded in the future, but they are much truer than they have ever been and therefore must only be considered incomplete.

Bibliography:

Asimov, Isaac. "The Relativity of Wrong." The Relativity of Wrong. USA: Doubleday, 1988. 35-44. The Relativity of Wrong. Doubleday. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. .
Lagemaat, Richard Van De. Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.
Switek, Brian. "Beautiful Skull Spurs Debate on Human History." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 17 Oct. 2013. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .

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