Kindly allow me to start off this article by quoting Albert Einstein’s
response to a 19-year-old Rutger's University student, who had written to him
of his despair at seeing no visible purpose to life and no help from religion.
‘If we speak of the purpose and goal
of an action we mean simply the question: which kind of desire should we
fulfill by the action or its consequences or which undesired consequences
should be prevented? We can, of course, also speak in a clear way of the goal
of an action from the standpoint of a community to which the individual
belongs. In such cases the goal of the action has also to do at least
indirectly with fulfillment of desires of the individuals which constitute a
society.’
The progression of knowledge is an area that
we should all aspire to make a contribution to. And how can we do just that in
the modern day and time? Today I will delve into the various sources of knowledge
and how they influence our lives and how best can we control them, all to the
benefit of mankind.
Now from the little that I have learnt from my
political science class and the wide research that I have undertaken since I
graduated and now during my masters, I have deciphered that there are various
forms of knowledge that man can lay claim to. The most basic one is Instinct. Instinct is that reflex
action, or an automatic circumvent that you partake subconsciously. It is by
instinct that we are able to save ourselves from imminent danger and that we
are enabled to respond to stimuli as fast as possible without putting the
cerebrum part of the brain to much task.
This is naturally occurring in all animals but is less pronounced in human
beings.
Instinct is argued to be influenced by our
past experiences and according to Sigmund Freud in his book ‘A philosophy of
Life’; instinct influences women more than men, psychologically. This is an
area that an argument can be won or lost. The second source is reason. This is what makes a human being
intelligent and it’s the reason why we have managed to conquer the world. When
a human being is born, he/she is a tabula rasa and as we age, we gain more
knowledge and we are able to reason better as we experience the world
variously. This source of knowledge also sets the home sapiens apart. This is
what defines the Intelligent Quotient of human being with some like Albert Einstein,
Isaac Newton, Plato, Aristotle just to mention a few recording some of the
highest IQs in the history of man.
According to Thomas Kuhn, reasoning
can be either deductive or inductive (a topic for another day) but our mental
analysis is what makes it possible to make useful of the insight that are
developed by our cognitive brain. Take for example the historical mathematicians
and architects who built the pyramids in Egypt, that is the reason why I usually
insist that there is nothing like ‘primitiveness’; Its only that a person may
be in one stage and the other another or the knowledge available is limited but
it is not the brain that is limited in capturing what needs to be captured and
processed in the various parts of the brain.
The other sources of knowledge is Intuition which points at a higher source of knowledge, spiritual,
where one has, or claims to have divine intervention through a deity and
knowledge is revealed unto him.
This is common in religions where the spiritual
leaders through visions and dreams and manifestations are able to predict,
correctly or incorrectly the occurrences that are about to happen or will
happen in future. This is a source of knowledge that has been disputed over
time mostly by scientists and atheists who condemn such as malicious
revelations that intend to bind the people involuntarily to make it worth for
the spiritual leaders to continue holding their offices while fleecing their
audience. At one point in time, the great philosopher Karl Marx in his book ‘Das
capital’ renounces religion as the opium of the masses. This argument, again, can be won both ways.
We can use these sources of knowledge
to advance the gains of humanity or even to deflate what has been achieved so
far. As explained above and in my earlier discourses, the possession of
knowledge differs from one person to the next and this gives some humans
authority over the others. This has proven to be true historically and even at
present. The masters of knowledge should make it their aim to impart leading
knowledge and seek to make the oasis of knowledge that are inherent in each and
every person flow and flow ceaselessly.
(This article first appeared on the Magazine Reel. You can access its original form at www.magazinereel.com)
Ken Mwangi
is the CEO of Intellectus Consultancy Ltd,
a regional think-tank on Policy, Research and Innovation. He is also the Junior Senator, Nairobi County, Youth Senate Kenya.
Kenmwangi90@gmail.com
Website: www.intellectusconsultancy.com; www.youthsenatekenya.org
Facebook: Ken Mwangi
Twitter: @itskenmwangi
