Within an area of knowledge is it more important to have credibility or power?

Credibility and power are two key terms that are extremely important and very
present in life, and in various situations. For ruling, for new discoveries and
developments, for the development of new ideas, for order, for peace. It is very
possible that in every situation of issue we find ourselves stuck in, we will be
desperate in need of these terms. In school, in the family, at work, everywhere. The
concepts of credibility and power also connected to one another in many ways. It’s
very difficult to have credibility without power. The dictionary’s definition for credibility
is “The fact that someone can be believed or trusted”1. People need to believe what
you say, you need an audience that supports you in order for your discovery to
matter. If you don’t have one, everything is useless. Because although your
discovery is correct, or your theory is real, you will not accomplish anything if nobody
believes you. People need to trust you and support you. But it goes both ways. You
can’t have power without credibility. The definition of power is “The ability to control
people and events”2. In order for people to follow you and admire you, they have to
be able to trust you. They have to believe every word you say without even blinking.
They have to be able to rely on you. Credibility and power go hand in hand, they
base on each other. The question is, which of them is more important within an area
of knowledge, which is more attainable, and how is it that they counteract each other
becoming a limit to the acquisition of knowledge.
On the one hand, we can discuss the acquisition of knowledge through
Natural Sciences. This area of knowledge is very well known for having multiple
paradigm shifts, changing the basic facts that we are supposed to know for sure. But
these theories are constantly changing, proving them wrong with new evidence as
the years pass. This is where credibility and power come in, gaining the trust and
support from the people, who choose to support or not this new evidence, these new
theories. We are the ones who choose to develop and change, or rely on our old
beliefs. Prosperity is based on us. Paradigm shifts are complicated, you have to give
full and complete evidence to your case, reasons on dismissing the old theories,

1
credibility. (2022). Retrieved 4 August 2022, from
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/credibility
2
power. (2022). Retrieved 4 August 2022, from
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/power
reasons on why the people should leave behind what they are used to, and accept
what’s new. Which, in this area of knowledge, happens all the time. Scientists come
up with new hypotheses and solutions everyday. It doesn’t always work for them.
Maybe they are proved wrong, or maybe they are right but they don’t have enough
evidence. Maybe it’s just that nobody believes them. When bringing new theories, it
is important to have power. To be well known, to be important. Otherwise, if there is
even a slight error in what you are presenting, other figures of power can take you
down. An example of this is Galileo Galilei. Galileo Galilei had a dream, and because
of it, he sustained that the earth wasn’t the center of the universe. In fact, it was the
earth who revolved around the sun, and not the other way around. He didn’t have
any evidence of what he was saying, and he was going against what the catholic
church, which was the maximum power at that time, thought about reality. That is
why he was forced to turn himself in to the holy office, and they began a trial against
him, with the objective of him being imprisoned and secluded.3 This shows how
power can overcome credibility once evidence isn’t involved. Maybe if he had
something to support his ideas, people would have joined him against the church,
and helped him at the trial. But nobody would believe him if he went against the role
of power, with no evidence to support him at all. To conclude, within natural sciences
credibility is very important, but unless you have a full and complete theory with no
margin of error, sources of power will probably take it down.
On the other hand, the acquisition of knowledge can also be discussed
through history. This opens a new discussion within credibility and power, and which
one is most important or valuable in this area of knowledge. In history, figures of
power such as kings, presidents, and governments are a huge source of information,
and role models. Everything that has ever happened was because a lider decided it,
someone in power took the decision to act in a specific way, and that turned into a
continuous source of events. This generated big problems between the different
power figures, and the society they were ruling and leading. Hard competition
appeared, because of the need for power, for land, for credibility. Some people are
willing to go to great lengths in order to get what they want. People are greedy. We
never have enough. And ironically, that mostly happens within the people who have

3
Galileo is accused of heresy. (2022). Retrieved 4 August 2022, from
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/galileo-is-accused-of-heresy#:~:text=Galileo%20was%20or
dered%20to%20turn,and%20secluded%20during%20the%20trial
more. This leads them to abuse of the power they already withhold in order to get
farther. They use it to gain support and credibility from the people. Because they are
the ones who give them that power. An example of this can be during the Russian
Revolution, after Trotsky was exiled from the country into Mexico. “Stalin began
mounting an opposition to his leadership; the revolutionary was snipped, airbrushed
and covered up in countless photographs. Sometimes, Stalin inserted himself in
photos at key moments in history, or had photo technicians make him look taller or
more handsome.”4 He didn’t only put himself in the pictures, but edited Trotsky out of
them. This talks about corrupcy, and the abuse of power. It talks about how the
power he had provided him the capability to do this, and gain the trust and credibility
from the citizens. And although it wasn’t his intention, this could also end up with
problems and limitations to the acquisition of knowledge in history. The powerful
figures using their power for their own convenience, end up affecting future
historians who are trying to figure out what happened in the past. They change the
evidence and the facts that we should know for sure in the future. And although we
now know what Stalin did, and know what actually happened in those pictures, this
could have been done so many times. It is very likely for other figures of power to
have done this, but we just never realized. We base our knowledge on the primary
sources that we find, but what would happen if these turn out not to be reliable?
What if we cannot trust these sources anymore? This would compromise the
acquisition of knowledge, because we could not know what of what we find is worth
our credibility, or if it's just another source of information that was manipulated.
“Another example of this can be the Holocaust deniers.”5 David Iriving in his book
“Hitler’s War”, talks about how, the mediocre testimonies from the nazis are not
valueble as there is no official document that confirms that Hitler was the one who
gave the order, or even knew about the liquidation of the jews. With the tons and
millions of documents that were left after the war, there is not one that states any
Hitler participacion in this masacre, and historians are not taking this into account
while telling the story. A discussion is created about whether those documents ever
existed, or if there was ever a silence pact within the powerful ones in order for all
those documents to stay hidden, or destroyed. If that were the case, Hitler denies,

4
How Photos Became a Weapon in Stalin’s Great Purge. (2022). Retrieved 5 August 2022, from
https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching#:~:text=After%20Trotsky%20
was%20exiled%20by,look%20taller%20or%20more%20handsome.
5
(2022). Retrieved 5 August 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ygWQE23vyg
and escapes the truth of what happened in the past, which ends up affecting
nowadays historians, who are trying to obtain credibility from the public in the
acquisition of knowledge from past events. Once again, an important figure abuses
his power in order to be able to hide, and grow bigger, ending up affecting the search
for the truth in the future.
All in all, credibility and power are extremely important factors in every area of
knowledge. We have discovered that they are not only connected to each other, but
also that it is very hard to have one without the other. But there are cases in which
one concept overpowers the other one, taking a main role in a specific issue. In
natural science, it was shown how sometimes power intervenes in the discovery and
the acquisition of knowledge, by not wanting for that exact power to be taken away.
They do not want for people to think or know that what they’ve been told and they
believed through years of their lives, is wrong. That would take away all their
credibility, and all their supporters. And on the other hand, through history it was
shown how the abuse of power in the search for credibility can end up affecting the
future. It was shown how not all sources are trustworthy, no matter how reliable they
seem. They could’ve been modified, or corrupted into gaining credibility in the past,
and it is now affecting the acquisition of knowledge within this specific area. Power
ends up affecting credibility nowadays, because of something that has been done in
the past. Once again, power overcomes credibility, showing that if you have power, it
is easier to obtain it. Power can be used to your advantage in the battle to obtain
credibility, but it ends up being a limitation in the acquisition of knowledge, due to the
fact that powerful figures object to the chance for new theories to arrive, and the truth
from the past to hold.

Word count: 1634

Bibliography:
● Credibility. (2022). Retrieved 4 August 2022, from
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/credibility
● Galileo is accused of heresy. (2022). Retrieved 4 August 2022, from
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/galileo-is-accused-of-heresy#:~:tex
t=Galileo%20was%20ordered%20to%20turn,and%20secluded%20during%20
the%20trial
● Power. (2022). Retrieved 4 August 2022, from
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles/power
● (2022). Retrieved 5 August 2022, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ygWQE23vyg
● How Photos Became a Weapon in Stalin’s Great Purge. (2022). Retrieved 5
August 2022, from
https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching#:~:tex
t=After%20Trotsky%20was%20exiled%20by,look%20taller%20or%20more%2
0handsome.