The True Key To Knowledge

1659 Words7 Pages
The true key to knowledge There is a well known and frequently used ancient Persian proverb that states that ‘doubt is the key to knowledge’. We can already say that doubt has indeed played a big role in the development of the sciences because after all, has doubting religious beliefs not led to the creation of the scientific way of reasoning itself? We can, however, distinguish two types of sciences here: social sciences, like history and beta sciences, like maths. Both of these so called ‘areas of knowledge’ require different kinds of deductive reasoning to come to conclusions which can be turned into knowledge. Do they have doubt as the key to knowledge in common though? According to René Descartes’ famous words ‘I think therefore I am’, we can only state one piece of knowledge that we actually have, which can’t exist alongside with doubt. Doubting our very existence leads to no knowledge, but to even more questions, not offering any answers at all. Can we therefore say that doubt is the key to knowledge? Doing this, we have to keep in mind that knowledge can be defined as the ideas about anything that is more or less universally accepted, but by doubting through scrutiny, study and thought, this knowledge is in constant development. In other words, through doubt, we get more knowledge out of old knowledge. Hereby, we can try to see whether the Persian proverb is true for at least two Areas of Knowledge: Mathematics and History. Let’s start with the first area of knowledge: mathematics. Mathematics has existed ever since the human race could think. For example, they needed calculations on how to hit a mammoth in the most effective and lethal way, even in those times, and they did estimations on how many people are needed to carry that very same mammoth. Mathematics therefore is often taken for granted, and isn’t doubted very often. We did however see that
Open Document