Professor Joe Lappin
Psychology 115A
14 September 2000
The Origins Of Knowledge And Understanding
Throughout the ages, we have been subject to countless philosophers express their ignorance and complete lack of knowledge. Men like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and many other contemporaries of theirs rationalized their inability to possess concrete understanding of issues that they could answer with seeming accuracy (examples which I will offer later). Now, in the twentieth century, we have Jacob Bronowski performing the same type of act, this time on more scientific issues, but even so holding the same position of the ancients. They battled piety, he battles math; they struggled with the concept of religion; he struggles with the concept of knowledge. The list goes on and on, but we are basically subject to the same conclusion from all parties, and in the end, according to Bronowski, "There is no absolute knowledge."
Let me first try and distinguish between pure or "absolute" knowledge, as Bronowski calls it, and wisdom. It seems that absolute knowledge implies complete understanding of otherworldly concepts or basic issues. For example, we can have knowledge of the respiratory system in the body and know how it works and be able to explain it and diagram it, etc. Things like love, truth, right and wrong, however, are all arguably subjective but at the same time provoke similar feelings inside us, weird feelings that provoke us or compel us, often times inexplicable, but there nonetheless. That feeling to me, is defined as knowledge.
Many other people try to define this knowledge. "Love is this…," "Truth is that…," they will argue, but people like Socrates would not. He would step back, say things like "Come now, my dear Euthyphro, tell me, too, that I may become wiser." (Euthyphro. Plato. Hackett Publishing, 1975) It seems that Socrates has the knowledge that he has none at all. He seems to understand that he can become smarter and more intelligent through the acquisition of knowledge. Wisdom, therefore, as I see it, is innate knowledge: things or concepts we know without sometimes being able to rationalize, but knowing them completely nonetheless.
Why is this important? My answer is because I think that one of the points of Bronowski’s teachings, that knowledge is limited or restricted, is a bit ludicrous. Maybe this is my adolescent drive to be stubborn, my inexperience, or even my wish to disagree and be right that makes me say this, but I think what I say to be true. I believe that we think in two different ways: the first is through language and inner-monologue, and the second is through images, emotions, or knowledge of concepts. Let me explain.
When we dream, and what we dream is unable to be explained to anyone else, that is imagery in thought. When we love, and we cannot define love, then we are thinking in emotion. We think of the dream as a dream and whatever that entails. Love is just love and whatever that word connotes, whatever it makes us feel is knowledge of love. These are mere examples, but they reinforce my reason for thinking this way. When we think in language, we think in the finite realm, everything is in words and axioms and can be transferred back to some form of identifying theorem. Things like 1 + 1 = 2 are basic axiomatic principles that can be explained or illustrated. But, when we receive a kiss from a lover, or when we say no to heroin, we are saying no for a reason that if translated into English adds nothing to the emotion we feel after. For example, if someone says, "What do you feel now?" after that kiss, we could say "love." Or if someone says "Why did you say no to the heroin?" we could just say, "It was wrong." Neither of these responses convey our sentiments or understanding of the infinite to the finite world of language or describable human understanding, but the emotions are there and give us the feelings which contain in them complete understanding. Nobody can really define love, but we can have that feeling of love provoked if they characterize it the right way. I think that people can know what love is. No healthy relationship will have a party say that they doubt their feeling, for then it would not be a healthy relationship at all. Love is just there, completely and absolutely, whether it can be put into English or not. When I asked my father about his decision to get married, he replied, "I just stopped asking questions." That, to me is complete knowledge, which in turn is wisdom.
I also struggled to understand another part of Bronowski’s claims. He said that issues like these "close the mind" at some stages and "open the door to tragedy." How can a scientist or a mathematician ever claim this? What closes the mind more that an un-interpretive math problem like 2 + 2 = 4. It is not probably four, not maybe four, or even slightly four. It just IS four. Done. Now lets use another example that closes the mind. Let’s talk about what piety is. Socrates shut his mind to it, in fact he closed his mind so much that his recorded dialogues with Euthyphro in a book called Euthyphro is one of the most famous texts in history. Let us now close our mind to the knowledge of right and wrong. God asked his followers to shut their minds to it when he ordered the inscriptions of the 10 Commandments to be written. He basically said what was right and what was wrong. He shut everyone’s mind so much that there are thousands of court battles daily across the world to argue if one’s act was right or wrong and the punishment that ensues. Of course I am kidding about these people closing their minds to these issues, because they clearly did not. They in fact opened everybody else’s mind to it and in doing so created numerous jobs as well. Lawyers, theologians, philosophers, judges, and teachers are all employed by the residue left by these issues and are paid to tackle these open minded issues all the time.
Bronowski also paints an ugly picture of what we believe. If there is no absolute knowledge, and all that we think is limited and restricted, then we are the type of people that Socrates detests. We are all guessing at the truth, we pretend to know what we do not, otherwise we would not make rules about how to act, and we feign truth about issues that really confuse us all. Who then would have the right to tell us that what we are doing is wrong? Is it really wrong? How would he know absolutely? According to Bronowski, nobody really does, or if he thinks that he does, he could not impose that on anybody else. So how could we be punished? We would live in a relativist world where there would be no moral rules that apply to everyone, and that we have no right to impose what we believe on to anyone else. For a relativist, arguing about morality is like arguing about ice cream flavors; there are no correct answers to moral questions just as there is no best ice cream flavor. There would be no study of ethics, just individual feelings, just opinions. There must be something objective, however, if ethics and morality is to be examined.
In fact, this brings up a contradiction Bronowski creates for himself. If there is no absolute knowledge, what right does he have to tell us that there is absolutely none. It would be just his opinion and therefore meaningless to me if I believed that everything was absolute. He basically says:
If there is no absolute knowledge, then the concept that there is absolutely no absolute knowledge cannot hold for it in itself is absolute. This philosophical position wants to have its cake and eat it too; it wants to first state that nothing is absolute, and then, put forth its own piece of knowledge that is absolute.
In Bronowski’s eyes, this essay is basically a subjective one. It is an essay that contains no absolutes, rather, it asks me to best show how I know what I really cannot, how well I can guess at the truth that he seems to be able to define quite well. He makes the societal values and the family values that I hold dear to be a well formulated and popularly held consensus which governs me and my family’s moral existence. My conscience is no more than a computer at the receiving end of thousands and thousands of years of human programming to make me feel bad when I do what we have come to think is bad, and good when I do something we have come to think is good.
So right now, to me I am right. This essay deserves an A+ and any lower grade would violate the rules that Bronowski has laid out. So, Professor Lappin, consider my feelings, consider the fact that I think I am right and place that A+ at the end of my paper telling me how wonderful and fluid my writing is. Or, you can be human. You can grade according to what you know is right, what you absolutely realize is right, how your thirty years of teaching and reading has taught you to grade, and do so accordingly. Either way, I will still think I am right!