Obtaining New Knowledge: Historical Events

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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. In the natural sciences, a knowledge issue that may stem from the statement of “That of which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow” is: “How can we justify that new knowledge always causes pre-existing knowledge to become discarded?” With the natural sciences, new knowledge is constantly being formulated by information based from the results of experiments and/or new discoveries. New knowledge in this area of knowing may interfere with already existing knowledge by making the pre-existing knowledge become less valid. As William Lawrence Bragg said: “The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” A topic that came up in a past history class of mine regarded the times of Nicolas Copernicus and Gallileo. Nicolas Copernicus used reason and sense perception ... ... middle of paper ... ...e to access pre-existing knowledge, it assists us in understanding the development of new knowledge and the evolving process of how we got to that knowledge in which we accept today. So, pre-existing knowledge does not get discarded but instead becomes built upon to improve it and allows us to understand the processes in which we arrive at our knowledge. Works Cited Bingham, Jane et al. Book of Knowledge. London: Usborne Publishing, 2003. Print. Carter, J. Stein. “History of Biology.” Biology.clc.uc.edu. 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 17 Jan. 2014 “Key thinkers on the human sciences.” theoryofknowledge.net 2012. Web. 17 Jan. 2014 “Key thinkers on the natural sciences.” theoryofknowledge.net 2012. Web. 17 Jan. 2014 Moncur, Michael. “Science Quotes.”quotationspage.com 2013. Web. 26 Jan. 2014 “Quotes on the natural sciences.” theoryofknowledge.net 2012. Web. 26 Jan. 2014

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