Humans Know Nothing

We, as humans, are constantly on an ongoing journey to pack our knowledge hungry brains with more and more information. Almost demoting knowledge to a drug for the fact that we are continuously seeking more of it like an addict. Sometimes though, we can "overdose" on it to the point that we give ourselves a headache and are left in need of a break. Ironically, no matter how much information we cram into our brains, we are never fully capable of using our brains to its full potential, in a way defeating the whole purpose of expanding our growth for knowledge . Sadly enough Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of the light bulb, points out the reality that, "we don't know one-millionth of one percent about anything" (Knowledge 1). Amusingly coming from a man who yielded the knowledge to invent an array of iconic devices, ranging from the light bulb to the motion picture camera, it eludes the actuality of how even though we are always looking for new knowledge, we will never be able to really know everything. Similarly, by connecting points made in Yarrow Dunham lecture and in Carl Sagan's essay “Can We Know the Universe?” we see the same inferences as acknowledged by Edison. Through the lecture and the essay we can vividly see some of the fundamental implications that arise for the concept of knowledge.

Although a brain can accumulate vast amounts of knowledge over its lifetime, even it falls within its own limitations. Our brain has to be one of the best features humans poses that other species don't really quite have. Yarrow Dunham, in his lecture "What's in a name: Labels and the Development of Social Knowledge", explained how all species has a brain but a human brain has the complexity and the capacity to keep on learning and gai...

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...n is finally known. As presented by Dunham we have the knowledge to domesticate animals, use them for our gain, and poses the most unique jewel; the brain but by Sagan words it looks like we still have a longs ways to go to know well, everything.

Works Cited

"Knowledge Quotes - Quotations and Famous Quotes on Knowledge." Famous Quotes, Quotations and Proverbs in Proverbia.net. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .

Dunham, Yarrow. "What's in a Name: Labels and the Development" of Social Knowledge". Auditorium, University of California Merced. 10 March 2011. Lecture.

Sagan, Carl. “Can We Know the Universe?: Reflections on a Grain of Salt.” Broca’s Brain:

Reflections on the Romance of Science. New York: Random House, 1979. 13-18.

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