Galileo’s heliocentric theory that the sun is the centre of the universe is common knowledge.Based on this knowledge we believe that it was like that yesterday, will be today, as well as tomorrow. The first question one needs to ask is that of; how does the access to knowledge about the past differ from the approach to knowledge about what is going to happen? Does our approach to knowledge about the past and the future need to be based on the presence of evidence? For the purpose of being able to evaluate these questions one must focus on various areas of knowledge, such as history, natural science and mathematics. Furthermore, one must evaluate these on the criteria of emotion, perception, language and emotion.
There is a variety of ways on how to approach knowledge such as truth, context, evidence and methodology. Both, the approach to knowledge about the past and the future have to be approached in a different way. First of all, one must consider the fact that the knowledge about the past focuses on events that have already happened before and thus cannot be changed, while future is still to come and therefore unknown.
For the approach to the past there is enough evidence that we can rely on, such as history books, diaries, hieroglyphs, buildings, sculptures etc. However, what will history be without all these sources? Would we then have any approach to the past at all?
With no evidence there would be no approach to the past. However, the eldest of our community were and will always be a source of knowledge about the past. Just like my grandfather always likes to tell me how bad the living conditions under the Communist rule in Poland were. However, one must take into consideration that the information that we receive is limited and biased. This takes place as mostly my grandfather passes the information from the past in a subjective way. This knowledge is based only on what he has experienced and his personal emotions that evolve around those events. So how can I rely on knowledge about the past? When approaching the knowledge about the past, we always have to question the validity of the evidence.
Galileo's heliocentric theory that the sun is the centre of the universe is common knowledge.1 Based on this knowledge we believe that it was like that yesterday, will be today, as well as tomorrow. The first question one needs to ask is that of; how does the access to knowledge about the past differ from the approach to knowledge about what is going to happen? Does our approach to knowledge about the past and the future need to be based on the presence of evidence? For the purpose of being able to evaluate these questions one must focus on various areas of knowledge, such as history, natural science and mathematics. Furthermore, one must evaluate these on the criteria of emotion, perception, language and emotion.
There is a variety of ways on how to approach knowledge such as truth, context, evidence and methodology. Both, the approach to knowledge about the past and the future have to be approached in a different way. First of all, one must consider the fact that the knowledge about the past focuses on events that have already happened before and thus cannot be changed, while future is still to come and therefore unknown.
For the approach to the past there is enough evidence that we can rely on, such as history books, diaries, hieroglyphs, buildings, sculptures etc. However, what will history be without all these sources? Would we then have any approach to the past at all?
With no evidence there would be no approach to the past. However, the eldest of our community were and will always be a source of knowledge about the past. Just like my grandfather always likes to tell me how bad the living conditions under the Communist rule in Poland were. However, one must take into consideration that the information that we receive is limited and biased. This takes place as mostly my grandfather passes the information from the past in a subjective way. This knowledge is based only on what he has experienced and his personal emotions that evolve around those events. So how can I rely on knowledge about the past? When approaching the knowledge about the past, we always have to question the validity of the evidence.
However, what if we receive this orally passed on knowledge from authority? Is this more reliable? An example of the fact that knowledge about the past received from an authority has been shown numerous times to be false is of propaganda and censorship in the Soviet Union. After its collapse in 1991, the Russian historians were finally allowed to speak about what the USSR had really been in the past. Surprisingly the information told by the modern Russian historians is very contradicting to what we heard before and used to consider as true.
Sometimes it is simply impossible for us to find out everything we would have wished to know about the past, as there are too little sources, from that we can construct further information. If to consider the buildings of Aztecs, the archeologists certainly know that this ancient tribe had some great architects around them, but they have struggled finding out other facts, such as what this society's interests were. This is just one of many questions that will probably never be answered, since the knowledge about the past is definitely limited.
Language is another limitation in the approach to past. For instance, we have an original source in Chinese. We translate this into English, and afterwards into, for example, German. The true meaning or message of the text may be changed or lost, because the more you translate something, the more words from the original source are altered during the translation.
The facts from the past can be different, which may depend on an ethical and cultural aspect. For instance, there are various interpretations on how the world was created considering the Big Bang Theory and the Christian perspective.2 These two contrasting ideologies have clashing approach to knowledge about the past, which are so strongly believed by different societies. The world offers many facts about the past, but which one you choose is your own decision, depending on your belief and culture. This tends to happen due to empiricism, as in order to understand something human beings often rely on their experience and culture.
Mathematics is an Area of Knowledge with which use we are able to find out about knowledge from the past. For instance, we can simply calculate the population rate 1000 years ago. In order to do this, one would have to have such kind of information from the present and the recent past. Then we create an induction model and test it, until we reach the result. (See Appendix: Figure 1)
When approaching the knowledge about the future one can again use mathematics in order to predict the outcome, such as the population growth in 2050, with the respect to knowledge about the past. For estimating, we can use a testing method like statistics.
Of course we would then get a numerical answer, but we cannot be sure if our predictions are going to be correct, as in most cases future is not testable. In other words, with the use of mathematics we are able to evaluate the number of population in 2050, but we cannot predict the fact whether there will be war, in which millions of people will die; or the cure for cancer will be invented and so the population would increase. Those social aspects can drastically change our predictions, which again would make our hypothesis be wrong. This would lead to the system turning chaotic, meaning it would appear to be random. So if we want to predict something mathematically we have to take into consideration all different possible ranges that might influence our result. (See appendix: Figure 2)
Modern scientists create new laws and theories, based on those, which already exist. According to Karl Popper's theory on falsification; if the current laws find out to be false, then the scientists try to prove it.3 This not only would be a contradiction to what is already known and respected, but also a way of developing science and technology.
On a personal level we cannot predict what the future will behold. We can only plan what may happen to us and our family. I am able to plan that I am going to University in Berlin in October, but whether I will not change my mind until that time and go on a trip to Las Vegas will stay unclear.
Some people have already a certain view on what will happen to them in the future, after death. These are religious human beings, who just like Christians know that after demise their soul will go to heaven; or Buddhists, who are strongly convinced about the idea of reincarnation and living new life after death as a new creature. These beliefs definitely give people hope for the future and prevent them from not being scared of what the future is going to bring with itself. However, one must emphasize that no one actually knows that what they believe is actually going to happen.
Another way of approaching future without any evidence from the past, is to use your emotion. When feeling that we might know what the future will bring with itself, we tend to say something like “I feel something bad is going to happen” or “ I will take an umbrella, because I think it is going to rain today”. This particular approach is not based on anything else but our instinct. Even though this is a very unreliable way of approaching future, it very often happens to be the case, as it is simply in the nature of human beings to be lead by their emotions.
[...]
1 “Heliocentrism,“ Encyclopedia Powszechna, 1973.
2 “Darwinism“, „Big Bang Theory.“ Encyclopedia Powszechna, 1973.
3 “Karl Popper.”Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2009. Herman Saatkamp. 12 Jan. 2009 <http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/>.
- Citation du texte
- Anonyme,, 2006, Compare and contrast the approach to knowledge about the past with our approach to knowledge about the future, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1278292
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