“We know with confidence only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases” (adapted from JW von v on Goethe). Discuss this statement with reference to two areas of knowledge. In today’ world, every person seeks knowledge and everyone fights to gain more of
it. While so many people have confidence in what they know or what they say, some do not. The reason to that is because they have doubt whether what they know is true or reliable enough. This doubt is what leads to confidence of some people about their current knowledge. In the context of this question, the word confidence means the feeling of certainty of the current knowledge one has, with it comes the word doubt which in this context means how suspicious one is about his/her current knowledge. The main assumption in this prescribed title is that it emphasizes that confidence and knowledge have purposely-inverse relationship. When there is more confidence in something, there is less knowledge about it and when there is low confidence, there is high knowledge. This assumption leads me to my knowledge question which is “Does doubt always lead to questioning the current knowledge we have?”’ To investigate this title and knowledge question I have through my 3 AOKS which are natural sciences and religious knowledge system and human sciences sciences and my 3 WOKs WOKs which are are reason and sense perception and human emotions.The examples that I have chosen for this prescribed titles are people who go atheists and people who don’t eat pork in Islam and finally the ptolematic and and corpenicus theory theory and newton’s law and mendella effect in respect to dunning kruger effect.
It is only logical to assume that increasing knowledge as a process of ‘proving’ things, or finding “scientific proof”, in most cases apparent “scientific proof” is supposed to increase confidence not decrease decrease it. However it is not the case when it comes to some situations in religion or in natural sciences. For various of reasons some people tend to switch from having a religion to having no religion. The main reason of this switch is because people tend to think more about the existence of God and since they somehow don’t have any evidence, they think that God isn’t scientific enough for them so they think that believing in something that they don’t see or have any witness is not worthy enough to worship so in other words, the more they think about God, the more they doubt his existence. So basically they
are questioning God’s existence because they have every reason to and they have no reason to believe something that they don’t see or can’t feel. Science has not proven the existence of God in any way and that is exactly why doubt increases. We have low confidence in the existence of whether god exists or not and therefore we will have doubts. Let’s look at Religious Knowledge Systems as a contrasting AoK, students could construct strong claims and counterclaims in this AoK. A claim could be that people who have little knowledge of contrasting belief systems to their own have a high level of confidence in their own religious beliefs, and that as knowledge of alternative belief systems grows doubt in their own religious beliefs grows. However, a counterclaim could look at how some people might use their Religious Beliefs as a lens to construct knowledge of other belief systems in order to show the weaknesses of those belief systems, and thus to bolster their confidence in their own belief systems.It this safe to claim that when we know little, our confidence is high and with more knowledge, we have more doubt or in other words the more we know about something, the more we doubt it. It is the same case when it comes to Newton and the proving of gravitational force and of course, the theories of Ptolematic and Corpenicus. Before Newton came up with the Gravitational Law, people didn’t know much about gravity or the existence of gravity and they had no doubt In anything because they didn’t know or question their knowledge because they had a high confidence in what they knew but everything changed when Newton came up with gravitional force theories. A little apple made him question his current knowledge which lead to doubt in his knowledge and low confidence in what he knew. Since newton, everyone knows that there is gravity and that is why we are walking stably on the surface but physicians are starting to hink of why and trying to expand their current knowledge because they don’t have a high confidence in how certain what they currently know and that is when people doubt themselves. This is the same case for Ptolematic and Corpenicus theory. In 140 CE, Ptolemy a green astronomer came up with the theory that the earth was at the center of the universe and that the other planets and the sun revolved around the earth and for over 1,600 years in Europe, the ptolematic theory was the most popular theory for the structure of the universe. As time went by, in 1543, a polish astronomer came Copernicus published a new theory that would eventually revolutionize astronomy. According to this theory, the sun is at the center of the universe and all of the
planets orbit the sun. These theories only changed because people doubted their knowledge.
In contrast, we can have a counter-claim that with high knowledge, doubt doesn’t necessary increase. So we can have high confidence with high knowledge. With refrence to one of our AOKS, we can conclude that this statement is somehow correct because in Islam, Muslim people are prohibited from eating pork due to reasons that science has proved to be true. Muslim people have a high confidence in what Islam has to say and they believe it no matter what. They would never doubt a thing about Islam, or any other religion for a matter of fact. Religion people are just one example of people who might have a high knowledge in everything but they would never doubt a thing! The reason to that may be the high confidence they have in, not their knowledge, but what they believe in. In science, we can never be 100% confident in our results because during investigations many errors can occur and that’s why doubting is legitimate in science. Mandella effect is a where a psychological phenomenon where a person recalls something that did not happen. Many people have a confidence that they remember something that has previously happened which in reality it hasn’t. In this situation people have high confidence in what they believe so they think that they have a high knowledge as well. This kind of people have a bias on their knowledge and they wouldn’t doubt anything.
In conclusion, it is possible to relate this question to the dunning kruger effect. The
dunning Kruger effect is a phenomenon in psychology where people who are really qualified tend to underestimate their ability whereas people who are underqualified tend to overinflate their sense of self-importance. To answer my knowledge question “ does doubt always lead to questioning the current knowledge we have?” I have to say, it depends on the situation. It usually does make us question our knowledge but sometimes we have too much bias to do that. It should also be kept in mind that human emotions affect confidence and doubt. in the area of human science, where absolute facts do not exist, hence knowing little makes one more confident in the area. However, in the area of natural science, absolute fact does exist, hence knowing little means lacking in knowledge in the area of natural science. It is correct that the more you learn, the more you learn that you don't know.
