Theory of knowledge Essay

The production of knowledge requires accepting conclusions that

go beyond the evidence for them.” Discuss this claim

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October 15, 2018

 In order to answer this claim as precisely as possible we need to define some crucial

terms stated in the given claim firstly. The concept and the idea of the production of knowledge

is the first thing that we need to define and it has a significant importance in discussing this

claim. There are many definitions on what production of knowledge is but the most accepted

one and the one that we are going to use is; production of knowledge is a process consisted out

of three stages: firstly, the idea which is the first step in production of knowledge then comes

the development of the idea which is a second stage and establishment of the proven idea that

has evidence and theoretical as well as practical support as the final stage. After defining this

crucial term, we may go further in discussing this claim. To do this precisely we will use

examples from three different areas of knowledge and we will analyse them with different ways

of knowing in order to be capable to come to a precise and well supported conclusion.

In the natural sciences as the area of knowledge there are many examples that we may

take in consideration. There are many cases of knowledge in this area of knowledge that were

not accepted or produced due to lack of evidence for them, on the other hand there are many

other cases in which a certain knowledge was accepted even though lack of the evidence. A

case that is really interesting and the one that I will take in consideration is the theory of

evolution. The theory of evolution by natural selection, first formulated in Darwin's book "On

the Origin of Species" in 1859, is the process by which organisms change over time as a result

of changes in heritable physical or behavioural traits. Changes that allow an organism to better

adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring1. This theory to some

extent explains existence of human beings. While it has some evidence that support this theory

they cannot be accepted as significant enough to prove the theory to the full extent however in

the last year’s top 100 scientist summit in Berlin 42 scientists accepted this theory as a pattern

1
Live Science-Theory of Evolution page published/visited in 2018
https://www.livescience.com/474-controversy-evolution-works.html
on how humans were created. However, on the other hand 58 of the scientist have not accepted

this theory but nonetheless it is something that is introduced in many syllabuses around the

globe with few exceptions such as dominantly Arabic countries.

If we take mathematics as our second area of knowledge which we would to include

in order to discus this question we may see that even in this area of knowledge there are many

cases in which knowledge was not accepted as there was lack of knowledge however there are

some counter cases as well like for example, while we accept the existence of an atom, we do

not have the appropriate models to "represent" them in view of the "evidence" we have in terms

of their nature and behaviour. Atoms are symbolic entities represented by the algebraic

formula, and their physical "existence" is "skipped" so that we can "produce" knowledge based

on the conclusions we have already reached concerning the nature of nature and what it is. In

this skip, we "overcome" the question of our ignorance of what might be a thing like the atom.

Raterford's model, sometimes used to describe an atom, is simply a piece of fantasy and does

not relate to the reality of atoms. Since the mathematics of atoms or anything else works to

create the outcome we want, we do not care what the nature of the atoms really is as long as

we can give reliable results or conclusions and can use these results or conclusions. In this

example we may see that the knowledge was produced even though there was a significant lack

of evidence to it.

Furthermore, if we take religious knowledge systems as another area of knowledge we

may see that there are plenty of examples which we accept as knowledge even though we do

not have scientifically proven evidence to it. However, we need to mention ways of knowing

here. Faith is one of the ways of knowing for which we do not need evidence in order to produce

knowledge. Beside faith imagination, intuition and memory are the other ways of knowing for

which we do not need evidence. On the other hand, we have language, sense perception,

emotion and reasoning as the ways of knowing for which we do need evidence.
 To conclude, evidence is not proof. Proof is something that you get through deductive

or logical reasoning.
You gather evidence that increases the confidence that you have in your

abstract proposition or hypothesis. Wheatear the conclusions go beyond the evidence or not

they produce the knowledge, just depending our ways of knowing.