That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded Essay

That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow. Consider knowledge issues raised by this statem - Essay Example Back in 1917, Albert Einstein is seen to have introduced a theory in which he proposed that the universe was essentially static in nature. This theory was taken seriously by most astronomers and various scientists and upheld as being the acceptable knowledge. However, this theory has recently been proven to be entirely wrong and a new theory has been developed alluding to the fact that the universe is not static in nature. Throughout human history, development and civilization, this has generally been the trend, as the development of new knowledge is seen to constantly cause the old accepted knowledge to be discarded. This however begs the question of does new knowledge always happen to cause the older knowledge to be discarded? Does the development of new knowledge automatically cause the older knowledge to be considered as being useless? Human beings are generally able to gain knowledge by the use of various means such as the use of sense perception, language, reason and emotion. T he gaining of new information in human beings is often seen to be so automatic that it is largely considered to be quite difficult for someone to be able to stop this process. It is by the acquisition of this new knowledge that humans resort to discarding the old knowledge in favor of the new knowledge that they happen to have gained (International Baccalaureate Organization 13-20). The incessant thirst and quest by man to gain new knowledge is seen to lend claim to the postulation that no system is ever completely understood, no picture is ever complete and there is no explanation that is ever sufficiently finalized. This fact is exemplified by the fact that our most established paradigms such as the Theory of Gravity are still seen to be referred to as being theories. This aspect is seen to convey the idea that this existing knowledge might, and will most likely eventually be replaced by a deeper understanding. As we continue to try and burrow deeper in an attempt to gain an in-de pth understanding, we are able to constantly find a number of new patterns that serve to contradict the acceptable truth that we thought we knew pertaining to the system that we happen to be observing. While some of these new truths and details cause us to essentially fine tune our existing theories, they sometimes however force us to replace these old theories with a wholly new theory. Various historical discoveries are seen to constantly cause us to modify our currently acceptable human knowledge. Perhaps one of the illustrations that I find to be most interesting in the illustration of this aspect is the effect of the continuous discovery of new, and previously undiscovered human fossils. By the early years of the 20th century, the larger part of the world’s leading anatomists believed that the earliest humans evolved and developed somewhere in either Asia or in Europe. By this time, the fossil remains of the Neanderthal man had recently been discovered in Europe and there had also been some claims of the discovery of the fossil remains of the Java man in Indonesia as well as the Piltdown man remains in England. While these remains were seen to be quite primitive it was evident that they closely resembled modern human beings and it is this aspect that helped in lending credence to validity. However a fossil discovery in South Africa in 1924 was seen to critically challenge the acceptable knowledge and view of an Eurasian cradle for mankind. An Australian scientist working in Johannesburg received two boxes of rocks that