Knowledge Essay

Knowledge can be defined in a number of ways. According to the widely accepted definition, knowledge is “justified, true belief”. Many facts that we have learned have been discarded and replaced by new contradictory or more accurate information. Nowadays, in the era of rapid development of technology, the expansion of human knowledge and the revelation of new facts and misconceptions has become even more frequent. The world we live in is subject to constant change and our knowledge about it is often modified. New discoveries and theories are sometimes dramatically different from the current true belief, that it makes us uncertain whether any knowledge represents the absolute and unchangable truth. Therefore, we pose the questions: To what extent is all knowledge truly reliable and how can we be certain about its expiry date? And how do the Ways of Knowing (imagination, faith, emotion, reason) affect the lifespan of knowledge?

Although it is a fact that knowledge is subject to change, we cannot question everything we know and consider our knowledge as just a temporary truth which has no actual scientific value even though it is, at times, discarded and proven wrong. This essay will attempt to answer the knowledge issues stated above, in relation with the Area of Knowledge: Natural Sciences and the Area of Knowledge: History, showing how the strength of justification and reason impacts the everlasting validity of some knowledge, as opposed to widely accepted beliefs which solely rely on imagination, faith or even emotion. In addition to this, we will also discuss how that which has been discarded still has its value in the way that it helped provide a certain basis for the further development of knowledge.

New discoveries and chan...

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... of knowledge change could even be predictable. Knowing this, if we are capable of understanding the principle patterns of how facts change, it can greatly help us in dealing with all the uncertainties that surround us. Even though it is evident that some knowledge is not everlasting and that it has its expiry date, we cannot claim that many facts which are scientifically proven, based on strong reason and justification, will ever change. Our planet Earth is a part of the solar system and it orbits the Sun. This fact will never change. We must not be driven into a delusion of questioning everything we learn. In fact, we should instead take advantage of the uncertainty of some knowledge and perhaps use it to develop our own critical thinking and reasoning. Such changes should not cause uncertainty but instead provide and anchor to the everlasting crave for knowledge.