Can Knowledge Be Discarded?

704 Words3 Pages
”That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow” Consider knowledge issues raised by this statement in two areas of knowledge. What has been proven today, and has been accepted as knowledge might be discarded with time. With time society, and technology develop. In my TOK essay I will be discussing two areas of knowledge that will link up nicely with the statement above. Facts change when new evidence is presented. They get re-interpreted due to new discoveries. The two areas of knowledge that I found linked nicely are History and the natural sciences. Till today sciences continue to evolve with time. New discoveries, evidence and strategies are invented/ found, and with the presence of such changes the facts/knowledge that are accepted today are then re-interpreted. For Example: The science field today is filled with competition. Scientists compete in creating new technologies, and in proving new theories. In science there is no such thing as absolute proof. In other words the theory that one scientist has proven today is more likely to be disproved tomorrow, due to the occurrence of new interpretations. A real life example could be at the time where the earth was said to be flat. This theory however was within a short time disproved as the earth is actually round. The Paradigm shifts: Thomas Kuhn introduced this. Kuhn said that science is dotted with scientific revolution. Meaning that no theory is ever true. However others might disagree, since usually a theory is never conclusively falsified. A theory is usually built upon through new paradigms. Meaning that a theory usually evolves from one point to a higher, and continues like this with time. Meaning you can’t go to B without passing A, hence one knowledge issue leads to the other, and that’s the process of knowledge. Karol Popper believed that science is not just a
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