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Theory of Knowledge Essay

“That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.

Consider that knowledge issues raised by this statement in two areas of

knowledge.”

Candidate Name: Sarah Nabila PribadiCandidate Number: 002189 – 048

School: Global Jaya International SchoolSession: May 2014

Word Count: 1,589 words

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4. “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.”

Consider that knowledge issues raised by this statement in two areas of knowledge.

Some knowledge may last for a long time, but some others may not. Just like the

earth, knowledge that we had in our mind also keeps changing. This caused by

abundance of researches that are constantly in progress and new information is being

discovered throughout the time. Based on my own interpretation, this statement can

be meant as knowledge will always evolve as the times goes by, no matter how

perfect it is. History and natural science have a large effect on this evolution; so these

two areas of knowledge will become the main discussion of the essay in order to

decide whether we should discard old knowledge or keep that in mind as a part our

newly discovered knowledge. Aside from that, sensory perception and logic will also

involve as the ways of knowing that will be discussed in this essay.

First, the knowledge issue that I am going to point out is to what extent does

knowledge in the past should be discarded. History, as an area of knowledge would

relates to the knowledge issue because some knowledge that we gained in the past,

sometimes can be replaced by the new knowledge that we gain the future. In history,

our perception and ideas about truth keeps changing, due to the information that we

keep accepting between now and the future. In the context of the real life situation,

let’s say Suharto as Indonesia’s greatest dictator of all time. Suharto was actually

acclaimed as the best president in Indonesia for three decades due to his “New Order

movement ”1. But now, people might say that he’s not a good president anymore due

to the secrets that had been revealed after years since his resignation, about the killing

1 New Order was an order that constructed Indonesia to become stabilized country in order to achieve economic and infrastructure. Suharto coined this term, in contrast to the Socialist movement that has been previously implemented by Sukarno.

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of nine generals2. The puppeteer of this case is Suharto himself as a plan to crown

himself as a president of Indonesia. It took time for the Indonesian citizen to realize

that their opinion about Suharto is wrong because during his regime, he kept

manipulated its citizen’s minds by showing the movie3 as the media of propaganda

annually, of course with his own version of the story. People (which includes myself,

as a knower) would think that the newer the knowledge, the better it provides the truth

because by reassembling information from different sources, we would know which

information is the right one by having varieties of perspective from different person.

In which manner people would agree the most that is the knowledge I would likely to

gain.

On the contrary, I would say that sometimes the knowledge of yesterday should not

be discarded, because otherwise, I would state that some knowledge could be still

useful and last for a long time. For example, in terms of history, let’s say Ancient

Egypt; who was the one who began civilization that already been existed since 3150

BC in accordance to the timeline of world history. In fact, they were the first civilians

to pioneer the making of paper produced by pith of papyrus plants thousand years

before Europeans’ began to use it as writing tools. Moreover, they were also the one

who introduced hieroglyphics, the world the first writing system that combine

alphabets and logographic. Even though many people would not use papyrus anymore

to produce paper; knowledge of turning a pith of a tree into a paper is still applicable

in today’s world, due to its importance as a media of communication around the 2 Before he held his presidential regime, Indonesian communists were accused of killing 9 generals and put all corpses inside a well. It is a one of the strategy Suharto use to become a president since Sukarno became exiled. 3 The movie is called G30SPKI, which tells the story of killing nine generals based on biased perception of Suharto. The film was played in TVRI once a year on September 30, which called as PKI Movement day until his resignation in 1998. Suharto extremely encouraged young generations at that time to watch this movie in order to enrich their historical knowledge about Indonesia, of course in Suharto way.

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world. Through this example, it shows that knowledge in the past shouldn’t always be

discarded and replaces by the latest knowledge. As long as the knowledge is ‘make

sense’, useful and applicable to our daily basis, I can surely know the knowledge may

have a better chance not to be discarded and therefore, last long. If I refer back to

previous example, it would be impossible to live without paper and alphabet since it is

really useful in our daily life as a result of helping us to communicate better.

The second knowledge issue that I consider in this essay is how do we gain new

knowledge in order to discard the old knowledge. Other than history, natural science

is also a significant area of knowledge to be discussed. Most of scientific knowledge

keeps changing. This occurs due to the new observations being conducted and

innovations invented. In the common real life examples, people used to believe that

the world is flat, but in 1492 Columbus stated that the world is not flat; it is round. A

lot of people didn’t believe it because they thought if the earth is round, everything

was going to be tumbled down. After spending so many years on discoveries, they

finally believed that the earth is round by observing the sun and moon’s position that

always keeps changing everyday throughout the years. When the technology started to

become more advanced, they can see it through the satellite that’s able to captures the

picture of the earth, to show that its shape is really round. Even Columbus used his

logic to generate his own theory; “If the world is flat, the ship will be falling off if you

have reached the edge of the world”4.

From this real life situation, I acknowledge that some ideologies supported with

strong and believable evidence will quickly change the way we think on something.

4 Who Discovered The Earth is Round - Starts With A Bang. N.p., 21 Sept. 2011. Web. 29 Nov. 2013. <http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/21/who-discovered-the-earth-is-ro/>.

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Besides believing our knowledge by only using logic or feelings, we should confirm

the knowledge itself by finding other evidence to reassure that the knowledge that we

‘saved’ in our brain is true. For example, to ensure that this theory is true, by using

our sensory perception, we should see if our earth is round by seeing the Earth’s

satellite photograph or even go to the outer space to make sure that it is truly round.

The only thing we know is the knowledge keeps changing, and we always assume that

the latest knowledge we owned is the better one.

In the context of my personal experience, I used to believe that lying on the bed of

nails could be hurtful and I was always amazed when I saw magicians did it on

television. But after I learned about pressure in physics, I tried to lie down on the bed

of nails to know how it really feels. Through my tactile sensory perception, I started

to know that the greater the surface area, the lesser the pressure is. Therefore, I won’t

feel hurt when I did it. The way that sensory perception changed my belief about lying

on the bed of nails would be significant since we should believe new knowledge

rather than stuck in the same old page. By seeing or feeling it ‘real’, we can

extensively judge that sensory perception have a powerful role in replacing old

knowledge. In terms of natural science, the new discoveries allow us, as knowers to

gain greater insights on reality and to prove that there’s something that we should

know. According to my own perspective, I would believe that new knowledge should

me more reliable because it comes up by reassembling the previous knowledge and

finding suitable evidence, ergo that’s the reason why I found out ‘knowledge of

today’ seems more acceptable. We can’t stuck in the wrong ideas all the time; we

have to be forward-looking.

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Conversely, we should consider the old knowledge that we gain is important because

it’s the main component that made up a new knowledge. Without these old theories,

we can’t discover new knowledge. It seems impossible to do that without having

presumed knowledge and so does this applied to our knowledge issue. Sometimes, in

the process of gaining knowledge, we should take it step by step, which means we

can’t reach into immediate level if we didn’t learn the basics.

In the context of real life situation, when I was about to learned biochemical processes

occur in living things. I used to hate chemistry, because I can’t understand any of the

theories. When I chose to study biology in the Diploma, I didn’t realize that there’s a

chapter called “Chemistry of Life”, which involves basic chemistry that I considered

difficult to understand. I regretted that I didn’t try hard enough to understand

chemistry in 10th grade. After that incident, I realized that it’s important to learn the

base knowledge before learning it in depth and further. In a simple way, I can state

that it’s crucial to learn everything because at the end, you’ll discover that everything

will simply related to one and another. I notice that there’s a strong correlation

between logic and this counterclaim, because I think by gaining knowledge in

chronological order, it’ll helps us to retain greater understanding and therefore the

knowledge that we used to know can be still useful as a reference of newly discovered

knowledge.

To conclude, I preferably stated that the knowledge of yesterday shouldn’t be

discarded because the old knowledge that we accepted could be used as media of

evaluation to our mistakes. Always remember that mistake is your greatest teacher

because it helps us to find the truth. Nevertheless, we cannot always rely on

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knowledge that we used to believed in the past, because if the knowledge that we

accepted is wrong, we can’t stuck in the wrong ideology all the time; we have to find

out soon.

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