Current knowledge depends totally on past knowledge
Knowledge is a tool that all human beings possess. It is the ability we have to understand, know and discover new facts through a series of elements that are: nature, actions and the relationship between these elements.
The current word refers to something that exists, occurs or is being used at the same time that is discussed. Finally we have the past word that deals with actions, facts or events that have previously occurred that the present.
If we talk about current knowledge, we refer to the knowledge we have today, while if we talk about past knowledge we talk about knowledge that it was previously that it can become the same or it may have evolved.
These terms have been defined so that you can have a better understanding of what they ask us in the title of the essay..
In particular, this question made me reflect on what they were actually asking me, causing a personal opinion about the question and also a series of implicit assumptions. Before presenting my own interpretations, I want to clarify that although I have an idea at this time it does not mean that as the question is analyzing deeply, my opinion will not change. The first question that came to mind once I read the title of the essay was. Can you create knowledge without having a base on them? , I also arose the idea that the knowledge of the past is the foundation and basis of current knowledge, since today what I can see is that current knowledge uses knowledge that had already existed as a basis that had already existed and from what was He had previously said the idea that knowledge arises from pre -existing knowledge arises.
For the examples that will help us to reach a conclusion and be able to answer the question that is presented to us we will use in the case of natural sciences biology, focusing on the discovery of phospholipid bilayer and the discovery of penicillin. In the case of history we will use World War II and the South Sudan War.
To begin with the test analysis we will begin with an example of the natural sciences, more specifically with biology. Within biology we will use the models of the structure of the lipid bilayer and the discovery of penicillin. Phospholipids are unusual molecules since they have a part of their structure that is hydrophobic and another part that is hydrophilic, that is why they are called amphipatic substances.
When phospholipids mix with water the phosphate heads are attracted to water while hydrocarbon tails are attracted to each other . This is why phospholipids form a double chain in which hydrocarbon tails are placed in the center looking at each other, since it is the hydrophobic part and phosphate heads in contact with water being the hydrophilic part.
Once explained how the bilayer of phospholipids forms different theories of the membrane structure were created. The first theory emerged in 1920 by Gorter and Grendel, when they extracted phospholipids from the red blood cell membrane and calculated that the area they should occupy if they formed a monolayer is twice greater than the area of the area of the
Plasma membrane. Where they deduced that they should be arranged in a bilayer. But phospholipids are not the only components of the membranes, there are also many proteins and some carbohydrates. From this, another theory was created in 1935, Hugh Davson and James Danielli proposed that in addition to the phospholipid bilay. This model is known as Davson-Danielli’s sandwich model. Finally we have the theory of Singer and Nicolson that emerged in 1966, better known as a fluid mosaic model since it was proposed that the membrane is formed by two -dimensional protein and lipid solutions ordered in an uninterrupted bilayer. It must be said that the Singer and Nicolson model is the one used today, so it is considered current knowledge.
The other example that we are going to use in this area is the discovery of penicillin. It was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1982 and it is said that discovery is a serendipia that refers to a valuable and unexpected finding that occurs accidentally, casual or even by destiny.
The discovery occurred as follows, Alexander Fleming was a professor of bacteriology at the ST. Mary ’S in London in 1928, he had to go on vacation and forgot. When he returned from his vacation he began to clean the plates, but observed something strange in one of them since he had begun to grow mold with the characteristic that there was a halo without bacteria.
Fleming realized that this mold had the ability to inhibit the growth of bacteria, after this he began to do numerous tests with him until he discovered that he belonged to the species Penicillium Notatum and that is why he named it penicillin. In 1929 Fleming published the finding, although until 1943 penicillin was not used in clinical trials.
As we can see, two examples have been presented that you provide us two opposing points of view, since in the case of the fluid mosaic we can clearly see that the current knowledge was past knowledge through the other two theories, while what in the case of The discovery of penicillin observed that current knowledge was not based on any other knowledge but that it arose by chance.
The second example that we are going to use belongs to the history area and will be the case of World War II. World War II was a war conflict that occurs internationally, so many countries in the world were included in the same. In this case we will focus on Germany since it is the country the loser country and considered guilty of this war because it is the one that begins the conflict when conquering Poland. During World War II, the Holocaust known as "Final Solution" occurred by the Nazis and in which the objective was to make people of Jewish origin disappear, since the dictator of that moment, called Hitler, blamed them for the situation in which Germany was. During this horrible process millions of Jews were killed in the gas chambers, shooting of large masses, forced labor, malnutrition, hypothermia ..
The regime completely dehumanized the Jewish people, the official number known by the majority of society is approximately six million dead Jews at the hands of Nazism. Today, this figure is still used as an officer, although there is a project known as “Encyclopedia of Campos y Guetos” made by the Museum Memorial Holocaust in Washington has been discovered so far that throughout a large part of Europe, France and Russia are a total of between 15 and 20 million people killed by the Nazis. Through this example we can see that current knowledge is based on the past knowledge that we have of the Holocaust and this occurs since new events occurred at that time are discovered day by day.
The other example to be used is the case of the South Sudan Civil War, which began in 2011. It is said that the conflict arose for ethnic reasons although there are people who believe that it is due to political and economic causes, focused on the rivalry between saving Kiir president of South Sudan and Reik Machar Vice President.
As we have said previously the forms of knowledge that arise in the essay are reason, sensory perception and finally memory. The reason is the ability of the minds of human beings to establish relationships between ideas and concepts forming an idea or a thought to reach their own conclusion. Sensory perception is the process of registering the world in a random, interpretive or selective way to become aware of this. Memory is a kind of image or set of images of events or past situations that remain in mind allowing us to retain the knowledge that we are acquiring throughout our lives.
To conclude, we observe that through the examples presented it has been possible to demonstrate the response to the title of the essay. In my case I have to say that I completely agree with the title of the essay that says “current knowledge depends totally on past knowledge” since we have seen it in the case of membrane structure of the bilayer of phospholipids and in the case From World War II, because current knowledge in both cases depends totally on the past knowledge about these issues.
Leave feedback