That Which Is Accepted As Knowledge Today Is Sometimes Discarded Tomorrow
TOK Essay
4. “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.” Consider knowledge issues raised by this statement in two areas of knowledge.
Knowledge is formed from different ways of knowing, with different language, perception, reason and emotion, a same issue can be interpreted differently by different person or group. From a personal level perspective, due to the difference in their background, culture and experience etc, a person’s knowledge is often different with another person’s. From a social point of view, a shared general knowledge can be influenced by the change in policies, law, new discovery, etc. With the uncountable number of uncertainty, it is almost impossible to say that all the knowledges we accepted today are useful tomorrow.
From the above statement “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow”, I believe that the “accepted knowledge” stated above is referring to a general agreement of a certain knowledge or believe, such as a theory or an idea that majority of people or certain group of people consider it as correct and believe in it, making that idea or theory as their knowledge. That certain area could be for example, mean a family, city, country or the entire world. Knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow, for me,“sometimes discarded” implies that only some of the knowledge claims are discarded and some stay. For the word discarded, it is not necessary to mean that we forget about that knowledge, it is more like an evolution. Such as the knowledge has been rejected due to new discoveries or been modified / developed into new theories due to the change of time and situation. They have a different level of “discard”.
Today and tomorrow mentioned in the statement are not literally what they mean by today and the next day tomorrow, it is rather, an indication of time, today is relatively the “past” of tomorrow and tomorrow is the “future” of today.
I interpret the above
4. “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.” Consider knowledge issues raised by this statement in two areas of knowledge.
Knowledge is formed from different ways of knowing, with different language, perception, reason and emotion, a same issue can be interpreted differently by different person or group. From a personal level perspective, due to the difference in their background, culture and experience etc, a person’s knowledge is often different with another person’s. From a social point of view, a shared general knowledge can be influenced by the change in policies, law, new discovery, etc. With the uncountable number of uncertainty, it is almost impossible to say that all the knowledges we accepted today are useful tomorrow.
From the above statement “That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow”, I believe that the “accepted knowledge” stated above is referring to a general agreement of a certain knowledge or believe, such as a theory or an idea that majority of people or certain group of people consider it as correct and believe in it, making that idea or theory as their knowledge. That certain area could be for example, mean a family, city, country or the entire world. Knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow, for me,“sometimes discarded” implies that only some of the knowledge claims are discarded and some stay. For the word discarded, it is not necessary to mean that we forget about that knowledge, it is more like an evolution. Such as the knowledge has been rejected due to new discoveries or been modified / developed into new theories due to the change of time and situation. They have a different level of “discard”.
Today and tomorrow mentioned in the statement are not literally what they mean by today and the next day tomorrow, it is rather, an indication of time, today is relatively the “past” of tomorrow and tomorrow is the “future” of today.
I interpret the above