When approaching this
question we must firstly understand what it means. The formal definition of
'knowledge' is: "facts,
information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or
education". And in regards to this question i think that it is important
to explore other people’s opinions, such as experts in the field, but only to a
certain extent. As the greatest discoveries in our world are products of
someone challenging society and experts. A good example of this Galileo and his
discovery that the world is heliocentric, as opposed to the church that had
everyone at the time convinced that the earth was geocentric. Had he just
conformed to what was believed to be true and did not challenge the higher
power's opinions, we would see the world differently and not be able to ever
completely understand it fully.
Whilst
exploring this particular knowledge question the main areas of knowledge that
will be focused on are history and the human sciences, to show either end of
the spectrum. Most considerably within the sciences most people do not question
what they know if it appears to be accurate and backed up with evidence, which
has cause many issues. Such as in 2008 a group of scientists claimed to have
discovered a new stem cell that could grow into anything, which can obviously
be seen as very useful to many people and probably gave many patients false
hope. When the breakthrough finally was exposed everyone just went along and
did not stop to think how accurate this information is. Until a certain magazine
decided to go against the social norm and investigate their theory further,
where they found out that these scientists, who are meant to be experts and
were so highly well renown, turned out to be falsifying evidence, and in fact
did not discover the new cell.
Whereas
now a days in history, a new theory has been developed called “Revisionist”
which aims to correct any past mistakes, and to trust ones own instincts as
oppose to earlier experts’ opinions. The revisionist movement involves many
younger modern historians looking back at past theories and discoveries made by
other experts, and further investigating and challenging them.
