Where does new knowledge come from?

Leave it to you to deliver with easily one of the most thought provoking topics in The Lounge. Bear in mind, the following aren't all of my views on the topic, just some. I'll probably go back and forth and continue expounding on ideas presented here.

Knowledge is power, isn't it? I agree with your statement that its true importance can be reflected upon once we see it in use. I'd also like to add, knowledge can only survive if we keep passing it on. These two things, using it and passing it on, are what makes acquiring it so imperative.

Your concept of 'polymath' is quite interesting to me. You firsthand know about my struggles in math, and I heard it quite often from my father that I would never truly be able to achieve anything remotely close in semblance to being a 'polymath' since I struggled in math itself.

Conversely, Bruce Lee's quote where he claims to fear the man who practices 1 kick 10,000 times instead of the man who practiced 10,000 kicks one time speaks volumes to me as well. Is it better to aim to become a polymath and continue practicing all the various stuff knowing that we'll never truly be proficient in it (since there is so much out there) or choose not 1, but maybe a couple of fields that we aim to be highly proficient in. Perhaps it's a debate for another time.

To answer your question, when we discover new information I believe to a degree, it has already existed and we've just uncovered it. We basically take things we already know (previously discovered) and use them to connect gaps and develop understanding of something we don't know. It's like taking puzzle pieces and putting them together to make the puzzle. We know something larger exists, we just need to fit stuff together to find out what it is.

That isn't the entire answer though and I can't pretend like I'm remotely close to the correct answer. There can be a million different arguments. If my answer is correct, then at what initial point was the first discovery (without prior knowledge) made? What was being bridged together? What was the larger picture there? How did we know it was knowledge that we could put to use? How did we know to pass it on?

BUT it goes way deeper than that. I hate to bring it up BUT it does bring religion into the question. I'm not going to state any religious views, for obvious reasons, but leave some thinking points.

And if it's the latter, does this 'Everything' have a set end (like there will be a point where we can't learn any more), or will it just keep going -

• We all believe in death. But what comes after? Since no one can be sure, we don't know how long we will continue to learn new material and who'll be learning it and when, if there is one, an end to it all?

and if it keeps going, why would it keep going?

• Is there a higher power at play that we don't understand that wants us to use our knowledge for good? Does the world end and does new knowledge cease to exist with it? Or does the world keep on going and new knowledge keep on popping up.

So yeah, there's a plethora of questions that I'm fairly sure, no matter how much we think about, can be answered. It's still a fun mental exercise though and one I am keen to discuss.

Dare I say you've opened Pandora's box?

 

Well, given the fact that nature has limits, so too does limits to knowledge exist. In addition, our brains have only a certain amount of pathways it can create due to the limited size of the brains themselves, so too is our capacity of retaining knowledge. For instance, can you remember what you had for breakfast two Mondays ago? A year ago? When you turned 6? Memories get erased, for the most part, as the pathways to get to those memories go unused and (except by triggers or dreams) deteriorate - as all things in nature do. Yes, there are ways to ease the recall of these memories (Sherlock's 'memory palace', anyone?), but even then there are limits (which is why Sherlock chose to ignore certain types of information in favour of that which provided him the capacity to do his job as well as he did).

 

So, when we, as a race, discover something new, is it just completely new knowledge that came from the mind, what once was not and now is?
Or when we discover something new, was it just us finding a bit of information that wasn't new but was already waiting for us?
Do we increase all knowledge just by our discoveries, or are we just trying to steadily encroach and uncover more of the knowledge of everything that could ever be known?
And if it's the latter, does this 'Everything' have a set end (like there will be a point where we can't learn any more), or will it just keep going - and if it keeps going, why would it keep going?

Neat thread! I'm interested to see what other people have to say about it.

-To answer you first question, I think some of it is completely new knowledge, but a good portion of it is knowledge someone else knew (let's be honest, probably 90% of every "new" idea has probably been had by at least one other human before but didn't act on or share). And I think that's our greatest downfall and something we've been getting better at overcoming - in the past new ideas were treated as evil or wrong so people with new ideas could either share and be persecuted (see: the world being round instead of flat) or keep silent/keep their head down but keep potentially world-changing ideas to themselves that might be rediscovered through someone else bold enough to share it.

-I guess my previous answer answered this question.

-I think the next two questions are sort of joined as well. We do increase our knowledge through our discoveries, as long as we share the information with others, but at the same time I don't think we can ever know everything - in fact I think once we do "know everything" we'll essentially reach a point that could be considered almost god-hood but at that point we'll realize that what there is another layer of complexity that we at this point can't even comprehend. I think knowledge is infinite and that even once we reach our current maximum comprehension (again, think that people used to believe the world is flat and the Sun and stars and planets revolved around us) there will be plenty more left to discover. Much much more than any of us could even consider possible.

 

How did I skip this?

When the idea of black hole was discovered, we came to know that something like black hole exist. It was a piece of new information for us but as time passed, we came to know about lot of things regarding same topic. There is always something that we dont know about.

I agree with Furie, it is not completely new. Copernicus discovered that earth is not center but instead sun is. Do you think no one before ever thought about it before? or was it that due to circumstances of that time no one before Copernicus had courage to express themselves? or was it like someone told about it but got killed before world ever knew about it?

Discoveries are not the source of all knowledge but maybe a part of it. Without imagination,curiosity and will to know , new knowledge does not come. We discover because we are curious to know more. we discover because we seek answers about the questions that are left unanswered. we discover because we imagine.

our species wont last enough to know about everything. maybe another species will see our remains and pass our knowledge to their future generation. maybe what we think is end is actually not the end? In my opinion, knowledge will keep on going, there will be no end. there will be changes and there will be something new in every change. every new human that take birth will have some new idea which will give rise to a new question and we will seek for the answer and discover. in this infinite universe, do you think there are finite things to know about? no, i dont think, at least.

 

When I first read this thread, I instantly rushed to conclusions. Being in a discovering field and having thought long and hard about the topic already, I had to hold myself back to prevent myself from writing a rushed response to something I though I already knew. In my field, I hear about stuff being discovered all the time. New theories, new data, new concepts on what reality actually is. I live in a world that seeks new knowledge, but my world is finite and not the only one. I think that how we gain knowledge depends on the world you live in, but that's not the question now is it.

I believe that knowledge already exists to be discovered. Be it randomly scribbling formulas on a page or seeking out evidence of a theory, it already existed and we found it. Fiction on the other hand could be considered knowledge, just not knowledge of the real world. This kind of knowledge I think is born out of preexisting knowledge, but is still something that has never existed before.

But what I want to know is how we find these discoveries or make these fictions. I believe we find it through curiosity. In my field, we see the lights glowing in the sky and we think to ourselves, Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. We draw upon previous knowledge to try to understand what are those glimmering thing in the thing, then we test our predictions and gather data. Sometimes the data's off, sometimes our conclusions are wrong, or sometimes we don't prove what we set out to prove and instead find something completely different. But it all starts by us looking up at the sky and saying how I wonder what you are. Our curiosity is the driving force for discovery. This idea goes hand in hand with fiction. We look up and ask how I wonder what you are, draw upon previous knowledge to try to understand. The only difference, is fiction has no data or proof. Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, just we haven't found it yet. This is contradictory to what I said above and that's because we only have one reality to base our reality upon, our reality. If you believe in the multiverse theory, (which I do), then it would make sense that there would be different realities from the one we live in, that we haven't found(similar to life on other planets how do we know that our life is the only life). But, if you believe in the theory of how the universe ends, then technically, other universes shouldn't be too different from our own reality. And this is how new knowledge is formed. By being curious and asking questions, then comparing it to preexisting data.

Will there be an end to knowledge? I'd say probably. Nothing's infinite in our reality but our concept of reality can change. For now, I'd say that there is a limit to how much the universe can hold, so there's a limit to our knowledge. Our capacity to know all that knowledge however, is another can of worm. With enough time, we can know everything, but at the current reality, we aren't (and will no where near be) able to understand everything. We'll die long before then.

Very interesting question. I'm glad I held myself back from writing a rushed response, I was able to come up with some new ideas that I never though of before. Great thread, just hope that I said what I wanted to say without screwing something up in that block of text.