The Applicability Of Value And Knowledge: The Value Of Knowledge

Knowledge according to the famous philosopher Plato, is one’s well-justified belief in facts, information, concepts or even skills. This essay is to explore the criteria in which the value of knowledge is measured, and more specifically, how the applicability of knowledge determine its value. Being a philosophical tradition supporting applicability as the only criteria to measure the value of knowledge, pragmatism rejects “knowledge that only describe, represent and mirror reality and embraces ones that contribute to prediction, problem solving and action.” Applicable knowledge is such a wide concept which could range from entertaining a child to rescuing humanity in an apocalypse. But is the value of knowledge depending only on its applicability?

Maybe the artworks itself do not prove applicable straightaway, the ideas and discoveries behind bear value because they are far-reaching in time to inspire and aid the inquire of knowledge that are applicable. The occurrence of perspective in graphic art is much ahead of the discovery of geometry. Although the concept of geometry has its place even at the time of Plato and remained influential through the Hellenistic era, most of the conceptual explorations in perspective construction were made by artists rather than geometers. Since 1400s Masolino da Panicale first developed the one-point perspective, it has taken 600 years to achieve a full understanding of linear perspective. The knowledge regarding perspective then have not only provide variety in ways of artistic representation, but also moulded the study of geometry and built foundation for many significant field such as vectors, computer graphics and even the aforementioned invention 3D printer. It has again proved that scientific inventions are not solely based on the majestic scientific method itself but the influences from many other AoK. Measuring applicability solely makes a shallow way of valuating