Knowledge

What is knowledge? Most of us are pursuers of knowledge, even though we hardly know anything. You disagree? What do you suppose you know then? That the earth moves around the sun? That fire burns? That water boils at 100 degrees Celsius? Sorry to disappoint you, but you know nothing Jon Snow. All this information you refer to as knowledge is just a pile of beliefs, no more concrete than abstract beliefs such as the belief in an afterlife.

That fire burns is not knowledge. It is a belief that the future will act in a similar fashion to the past. Fire might have burnt you once, or twice, and hence, you believed that every time you touch a flame, it will burn. Maybe you’ve never even come close to a flame. The only interaction you’ve had with fire was in school, where you were taught about fire and its properties – and you were reliably informed that fire burns. In this case, your belief is still based on the historical experience of someone else. It is not based on logical conclusion.

The same thing for water’s boiling point. No one came to the logical conclusion that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius for the simple fact that it is not logically evident. However, after repeated experiments involving water at a particular atmospheric pressure and conditions, it was concluded that a certain temperature is the boiling point of water. Thus, historical experience makes us believe that if we heat pure water, it will boil at 100 degrees Celsius.

Therefore, isn’t science nothing more than the belief that the future will act similar to the past?