Using History and One Other Area of Knowledge Examine the Claim That It Is Possible to Attain Knowledge Despite Problems of Bias and Selection

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In the areas of history and the natural sciences it is particularly important to discover ‘the truth’ - it is the job and aim of every historian and scientist. But attaining the truth is fraught with obstacles, some of the the most prominent of which being bias and selection. Bias is the favouring of one viewpoint over another, which often comes hand in hand with selection, the act of choosing due to personal preferences. In this essay, with reference to three ways of knowing and different types of bias, I will be examining the problems with attaining knowledge and if attaining the true knowledge is actually possible in the presence of bias and selection. History is the discovery and collection of past events, sometimes defined as a social science. This is a subject particularly open to bias and selection, where many types of bias can be observed. First and foremost, it must rely on personal accounts of the past, which of course are built on individual perception which is in turn influenced by emotion (how we feel about something) because we can’t physically experience the past as it actually was: and herein lies the problem. As Alfred Korzybski (a polish mathematician) said “the map is not the territory”, meaning that our perception navigates us like a map though reality, but that our perception and reality aren’t, and can never be, identical. In terms of selection, the knowledge that the historian acquires is effectively their choice as they choose the subject and the resources whilst going into the subject with some preconceived ideas and claims. In the USA, a history textbook was recalled after it ‘was clearly pro-islam and anti-christian’ - the book emphasised the positive aspects of Islam whilst dismissing some of the controversial issues within the religion. This highlights the fact that historians themselves have their own perceptions so

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