Practical Limits For Obtaining Knowledge
What we hold to be knowledge is often derived by a combination of reason from either traditional, authoritative, or scientific sources. Many times such knowledge is not verifiable; sometimes the process of testing is prohibitively dangerous or expensive. For instance, some physics theories about the nature of the universe, such as string-theory, require the construction of testing equipment currently beyond our technology. Since such theories are in principle subject to verification or refutation, they are scientific; since they are not proven experimentally, they are not considered certain knowledge. Rather, in such cases we have certain knowledge only of the theory, but not of what the theory describes.
"Of the three ways in which men think that they acquire knowledge of things—authority, reasoning, and experience—only the last is effective and able to bring peace to the intellect." (Roger Bacon, English alchemist, astrologer, philosopher and a major progenitor of modern science.
Read more about this topic: Descriptive Knowledge
Famous quotes containing the words practical, limits, obtaining and/or knowledge:
“Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“And if the civilized man’s pursuits are no worthier than the savage’s, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)