Theory of Knowledge Essay

Prescribed title: Within areas of knowledge, how can we differentiate between change and

progress? Answer with reference to two areas of knowledge.

Word count: 1600

February 2021
 In one of the more recent video essays uploaded by the youtube channel ​The Cinema

​ e​ ntitled “How To Elevate Yourself Through Art”​1 ​— ​content creator Luiza Liz
Cartography —

Bond describes knowledge as a tower that is forever being constructed, wherein ideas are the

building blocks: the stones the tower is edified with. Some may be greater, and some smaller,

and the addition of a large stone may lead smaller stones to tumble and fall. However, new

stones will always be piled at the summit: the tower will progress. She goes on to claim that

there exist ideas which hold such power, that they crush the tower down to its very foundations,

and form a new base. To Bond, progress is by nature incremental, while change implies the

fundamental transformation of shared and personal knowledge. Likewise, American physicist

Thomas Kuhn, states that science “does ​not develop by the accumulation of individual

discoveries and inventions”​2​, but through “non-incremental or revolutionary change”​3​, what he

calls a paradigm shift. Not only does he validate the tower pattern, he posits its pivotal role in the

furthering of scientific knowledge. This definition triggers the question: how can we differentiate

between incremental progress and radical change, and is invalidating previous thought necessary

for the development of knowledge? In order to explore this inquiry I will use the contrasting

lenses of the natural sciences and the arts ​— ​Bond’s and Kuhn’s respective areas of knowledge.

Unlike fields which rely heavily on subjectivity, within the natural sciences there exist

standardized criteria for identifying improvements or advancements. The decline of infection

rates after the development of a vaccine, for instance, can be measured quantitatively and

objectively through studies and replicas. Kuhn, however, challenges this notion of cumulative

scientific knowledge. He states that the progress of science occurs within a paradigm, a set of

1
​Bond, Luiza Liz. ​How To Elevate Yourself Through Art​. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32DIbhMlUxw. Accessed
23 Jan 2021.
2
​ ​Thomas, Kuhn. ​Kuhn''s ''The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions''​. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008, p.14.
3
Idem.
"universally recognized scientific achievements that [...] provide model problems and solutions

for a community of practitioners''​4​, and only develops when the paradigm is delegitimized and

replaced. The Copernican Revolution invalidated the heliocentric model and the entire body of

science that had sprung forth from it. Printing IB Oxford Physics textbooks that define light as

James Maxwell’s electromagnetic waves​5 implies refuting Newton’s particle theory of light. One

can then identify paradigm shifts in science when a discovery catalyzes the passage from one

theoretical framework to another, from an established language to one difficult to comprehend by

scientists of the previous paradigm; as Einstein put it: “it took physicists some decades to grasp

the full significance of Maxwell's discovery, so bold was the leap”​6​.

Nevertheless, science does not tend to change radically ​— at the base of scientific

knowledge is a constant process of refining. One of the fundamental pillars of the scientific

method is replication; a solitary study is not enough for a theory to be considered valid. For

example, Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection have been firmly established in the

scientific community as the number of independent field studies and publications ​— ​from

Dobzhansky​’s ​Genetics and the Origin of Species (​1937​), to Bell’s ​Selection: The Mechanism of

Evolution (​2008​) ​— ​has grown and built upon Darwin’s original thesis​7​. Science is subject to

constant revisions and falsifications: one does not get from Newton’s light corpuscles to

Maxwell’s electromagnetic waves without first passing through Grimaldi and Huygens’

4
​Thomas, Kuhn. ​Kuhn''s ''The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions''​. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008, p.8.
5
​ omer, David, and Michael Bowen-Jones. "IB Physics Course Book: 2014 Edition". ​Global.Oup.Com,​ 2021,
H
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ib-physics-course-book-2014-edition-9780198392132.
6
Einstein, Albert ​"Considerations Concerning the Fundaments of Theoretical Physics" ​Science, ​1940 487–492.
7
​K. Conner, Jeffrey. "Field Studies Of Natural Selection". ​Obo​, 2021,
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199941728/obo-9780199941728-0097.xml. Accessed 23 Jan
2021.
theoretical proposal of light as a wave and Fresnel’s and Young’s experimental demonstration a

hundred years later​8​.

At the same time, the scientific community's tendency to only legitimize ​theories that

have withstood many tests may hinder the chances of radical change occurring, as it infers that

the quality of knowledge depends on the number of individuals that validate it. ​Adhering to a

more accepted version of scientific knowledge can, upon occasion, be dangerous. One hundred

years ago radioactive materials were considered beneficial. Doctors recommended them for

medical treatments, and large companies incorporated them into creams or toothpastes; that

radiation was advantageous was a well-established scientific fact. Today this belief has changed:

we now consider radioactive elements to be toxic and harmful. However, as with Maxwell’s

model, this discovery was made in phases: it transitioned from ​hypothesis,​ to ​theory​, to

experimentally proven theory. Perhaps although a scientific revolution does require nullifying

previous scientific ideas, it may not be as abrupt as Kuhn theorizes, and may require a period of

incremental progress inside itself.

Within the arts, on the other hand, improvement or advancement is far from quantifiable

as artistic quality is inherently subjective. Returning to Bond’s image of the tower as a metaphor

for the accumulation of knowledge over time, it is plausible to claim that art progresses, as new

pieces are constantly being created. The question is, can there be revolutionary change that

creates a whole new “artistic paradigm”?

8
​ ​"Canon : Canon Technology | Canon Science Lab | Light Is It A Wave Or A Particle?". ​Canon Global​, 2021,
https://global.canon/en/technology/s_labo/light/001/11.html#:~:text=These%20questions%20have%20long%20puzzled,of%20pa
rticles%20(corpuscular%20theory). Accessed 23 Jan 2021.
 In May of 1939 an academic article by an unknown author is published in the Argentine

literary journal ​Sur​. Titled "Pierre Ménard: author of the Quixote", it describes an eccentric

French scholar whose unfinished magnus opus consists in recreating Don Quixote as if written

for the first time. This short story has spawned fascinating debates about plagiarism, and

interestingly enough, the writer, Jorge Luis Borges, does not sign it​9​; he leaves the readers to

assume it is a legitimate essay, blurring the lines between “the literary” and “the real”. Much of

his early fiction follows the same pattern: Borges leaves stories unsigned or signed by a plethora

of pen names. Why would an artist dismiss their authorship?

In a 1969 interview with Richard Burgin Borges cites Bergson’s diagram of an inverted

cone to represent human memory as an explanation​10​. Our oldest surviving memories reside at

the cone’s base, and are brought to light when oneiric material floats to the surface, for instance,

in dreams. The vertex of the cone is our present perception before it mutates into memory​11​. As

we accumulate knowledge and experiences the base of the cone becomes wider, yet we

simultaneously move farther away from the starting point and lose the reference of how the ideas

that emerge in our head came to be. Borges renounces authorship because he claims that as an

artist and seer he cannot help but pull ​— ​whether consciously or subconsciously ​— ​from the

​ emory cone.
work of other creators: he is drinking from ​his m

Within art the line between copying and referencing is a blurry one: award winning

director Darren Aronovsky controversially defends mirroring Satoshi Kon’s anime thriller

Perfect Blue i​ n the bathtub scene of ​Requiem for a Dream ​as “paying homage” to the Japanese

9
​García-Lugo, Alejandra. "Mundo Narrativo En “Pierre Menard, Autor Del Quijote”, De Jorge Luis Borges".
Lacolmena.Uaemex.Mx,​ 2021, https://lacolmena.uaemex.mx/article/download/9152/8942/. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.
10
​Jorge, Martin. ​Borges Lector De Bergson​. 2021,
https://es.scribd.com/document/383971129/Jorge-Martin-Borges-Lector-de-Bergson-doc. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.
11
​Lawlor, Leonard and Valentine Moulard Leonard, "Henri Bergson", ​The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (​ Fall 2020
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/bergson/.​Accessed 23 Jan 2021.
animator​12​, and Tarantino’s constant visual borrowing from cinema history has simultaneously

garnered plagiarism lawsuits and become his trademark. The definition of ​tarantinoesque i​ n the

Oxford dictionary even underlines this quality, stating that art that falls under its definition must

include, among other things, “cineliterate references''​13​. However, Borges suggests that

plagiarism is not only desirable, but inevitable: everything an artist watches, reads or consumes

through their senses stays with them and tends to be regurgitated following the pattern of

Bergson’s cone. Within art, then, radical paradigm shifts are simply not feasible: art will always

feed off of itself, following the pattern of progress.

Nevertheless, we do speak of artistic revolutions. A keen example is Duchamp’s water

fountain, which introduced the artistic concept of “appropriation”, that is to say, that an object's

meaning changes when placed within a new context. “Appropriation” is the foundation of

Duchamp’s oeuvre, and is thought to have transformed our way of thinking about what art is, or

can be. He acknowledges that art speaks to what has come before, but defends the possibility of

tearing down the tower of artistic knowledge and starting afresh. As Gauguin put it: “art is either

plagiarism or revolution”​14​. However, “artistic revolutions” such as Duchamp’s are not bereft of

influences: the French New Wave borrowed from American Film Noir and Italian Neorealism​15

and although Brecht’s “alienation” certainly broke the paradigm of western dramatic traditions,

the rejection of “a believable illusion” had been present for centuries within Japanese Noh

Theatre ​— ​a stagnant window to the past that Brecht would most certainly have been familiar

with. Unlike scientific revolutions, revolutions in art may well involve compiling “what exists
12
​ ​The SATOSHI KON PROBLEM​. STEVEM, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GzZuRMwbW4. Accessed 23 Jan
2021.
13
​"Tarantinoesque | Definition Of Tarantinoesque By Oxford Dictionary On Lexico.Com Also Meaning Of Tarantinoesque".
Lexico Dictionaries | English,​ 2021, https://www.lexico.com/definition/tarantinoesque. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.
14
​Paul, Gauguin. "Paul Gauguin". ​Oxford Reference​, 2021,
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-ed4-00004741. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.
15
​"When The French Reinvented Cinema: The New Wave". ​Frenchhighereducation.Org,​ 2021,
https://frenchhighereducation.org/4415-when-french-reinvented-cinema-new-wave. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.
into what never existed before”​16​, a process which relies on the accumulation of knowledge and

which does not adhere to Kuhn’s definition of a paradigm shift. In art, moving forward does not

mean rejecting the past, but using the past as clay with which to shape new ideas.

In conclusion, the development of science does necessitate a certain openness to radical

change and to invalidating established knowledge. However, viewing paradigm shifts as sudden

and all encompassing feels overly simplistic: for one to occur a whole set of cumulative

revisionary phases ​— ​of progress ​— ​must follow the initial revolutionary seed. Even then,

knowledge that has been driven underground may be of use in explaining the current tower of

ideas ​— ​in school, learning an obsolete atomic model before the quantum model makes certain

concepts easier to grasp. Art on the other hand, requires constant dialogue with past knowledge.

Art is not a tower that can be toppled, it is an ever growing web, and the more connections form

the more “artistic revolutions” can occur. In “How to Elevate Yourself Through Art” Bond goes

on to claim that an artist finds their voice precisely through amassing references. Cumulative

progress is then essential to the quality of artistic knowledge. My past self would have written a

less nuanced essay because my system of artistic references would have been narrower; I can’t

help but drink from my own memory cone.

16
​Steinem, Gloria. ​Moving Beyond Words.​ Open Road Media, 2012, p. 17.
Bibliography

1. "Canon : Canon Technology | Canon Science Lab | Light Is It A Wave Or A Particle?".

Canon Global,​ 2021,

https://global.canon/en/technology/s_labo/light/001/11.html#:~:text=These%20questions

%20have%20long%20puzzled,of%20particles%20(corpuscular%20theory)​ . Accessed 23

Jan 2021.

2. "Tarantinoesque | Definition Of Tarantinoesque By Oxford Dictionary On Lexico.Com

Also Meaning Of Tarantinoesque". ​Lexico Dictionaries | English​, 2021,

https://www.lexico.com/definition/tarantinoesque​.

3. The SATOSHI KON PROBLEM​. 2021,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GzZuRMwbW4​. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.

4. "When The French Reinvented Cinema: The New Wave". ​Frenchhighereducation.Org​,

2021, ​https://frenchhighereducation.org/4415-when-french-reinvented-cinema-new-wave​.

Accessed 23 Jan 2021.

5. Bond, Luiza Liz. ​How To Elevate Yourself Through Art.​ 2021,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32DIbhMlUxw​. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.

6. García-Lugo, Alejandra. "Mundo Narrativo En “Pierre Menard, Autor Del Quijote”, De

Jorge Luis Borges". ​Lacolmena.Uaemex.Mx,​ 2021,

https://lacolmena.uaemex.mx/article/download/9152/8942/​ . Accessed 23 Jan 2021.

7. Homer, David, and Michael Bowen-Jones. "IB Physics Course Book: 2014 Edition".

Global.Oup.Com,​ 2021,

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ib-physics-course-book-2014-edition-97801983

92132​.
8. Jorge, Martin. ​Borges Lector De Bergson.​ 2021,

https://es.scribd.com/document/383971129/Jorge-Martin-Borges-Lector-de-Bergson-doc​.

Accessed 23 Jan 2021.

9. K. Conner, Jeffrey. "Field Studies Of Natural Selection". ​Obo,​ 2021,

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199941728/obo-978019

9941728-0097.xml​. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.

10. Gauguin, Paul. "Paul Gauguin". ​Oxford Reference,​ 2021,

https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780191826719.001.0001/q-oro-e

d4-00004741​. Accessed 23 Jan 2021.

11. Steinem, Gloria. ​Moving Beyond Words​. Open Road Media, 2012.

12. Thomas, Kuhn. ​Kuhn''s ''The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions''​. Bloomsbury

Publishing, 2008,