Epistemology Essay On The Impact Of Manipulations And Hoaxes On People’S Knowledge
While a lot of people follow and believe in certain ideas and views solely because of the fact that the mass agrees, I completely disagree with that type of thinking and find it extremely unreasonable to consider something to be knowledgeable when the only thing that backs it up is the acceptance of the mass. I believe that true knowledge should be backed up by studies and scientific researches that support the claim and transforms it into being valid information or in other words, knowledge. In this essay I’m going to support and reason my opinion using two distinctly different areas of knowledge, the first is natural sciences and the second one is human sciences. In natural sciences, I’m going to investigate and examine the reasons people relied on scientific theories blindly without doubting or checking the theories they follow. On the other hand in human sciences, I am going to explore the role of manipulations and hoaxes on the way people react and believe in information.
Knowledge is information, facts and data that people understand, know and can apply at any given time. Knowledge can be based on facts; a fact is a knowledge that has been examined, evaluated and tested by experts (related to the subject). Knowledge can also be retained through real-life experience and exposure. Furthermore, knowledge has a wide variety of areas to it, the areas range from natural sciences to religious knowledge. Many people think that a vast amount of knowledge is retained directly from school, which is conceiving, as the school may provide you with information data and facts, but for those to be 'knowledge' the pupil must explore and research on his own and understand them for himself. Only afterwards, the information acquired by the student can be considered as knowledge.
The flat earth model was the most common and abundant believe among all humankind until about two thousand five hundred years ago, when a ground-breaking and quite compelling idea surfaced- the earth might not be flat. This theory was surfaced by greek philosophers( for example Pythagoras) who used calculations based on the sun’s rise and fall, shadows and others which reached a breakthrough regarding the understanding of the shape of the earth. They came to the conclusion that the earth has a sphere-like shape. At the time, most people held tight to they’re archaic theory and couldn’t even comprehend or grasp the possibility that the shape of the earth might be spherical and not flat, as they thought. Hundreds of years have passed by since the philosophers came up with the theory, and only then people started to acknowledge that there is a possibility that the model they have been raised on and believed in is false and does not represent the reality. People started questioning the flat earth model because of a couple of reasons; while when calculating short distances the calculations would be accurate and represent exact distances, calculations conducted on longer distances would turn up to be inaccurate. Furthermore, in the ancient days, a lot of people would leave they’re communities and sail to the unknown, hence, when those same people did not return back to their communities from their journeys, their community sought an explanation and tried to reason their vanishing. So they opted into thinking that the world is flat and the reason their beloved ones did not return is that they “fell” from the earth. As the technology and knowledge on those sailings progressed people understood that the reason for the vanishing is none other than tempests and massive storms that caused extremely strong winds and currents and led to some ships to drown and the people on board to die.
Another example that knowledge isn’t more reliable because of the fact that it is accepted by a large amount of people is ptomelaic system (model)/the geocenter model. This model was developed in the 2nd century AD by the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus. This ancient theory indicated that all the stars including the sun revolved around planet earth and that planet earth did not move at all, furthermore that theory suggested that planet earth was not only the center of our solar but the center of the entire universe. At that time most people agreed with ptomely’s model because it was unimaginable and unthinkable that earth is not the center of the universe because that also implies that humankind is not the center. Moreover, the consensus surrounding the model was not only popular in the years following its development, but the model also kept its supporters and believers until 1543, when Nicolaus Copernicus dismissed the geocentric model when he developed the heliocentric model. The heliocentric theory suggested that planet earth was not the center of the solar system, nor the universe. It also dismissed the theory that planet earth was static when it gave unambiguous evidence to back up the theory. Only then, people started reconsidering the geocentric model and started focusing and believing in the new heliocentric model.
On the other side of the spectrum we have human sciences. Although their name is quite conceiving, as they are not directly related to “traditional” sciences, they are called so because of the way knowledge is retained in that field. In human sciences most of the knowledge and information gathered is through observations on humans, for example the way they react to changes and even their perspective on specific information or opinions.
One of the areas that misleads people, makes them believe in information without second-guessing, deceives them and makes them vulnerable to unreliable information is the marketing field. This field ‘feeds’ people with information that is “alternative truth” or in other words: incorrect. One of the biggest lies of marketing can be found in marketing to everything that is considered to be “healthy” food. That field has misused terminology on a countless amount of times, hence, it led to people starting to attribute words like fiber, calcium, and Eisen to healthy food when in fact those substances do not make the product (food) healthy. Nowadays when most people walk in the grocery store and see two identical products, one product doesn’t have any label attached and the second product is labeled with words like bio and fiber, they will immediately choose that product because they believe that this product is healthier despite the fact that the foods that are enriched with food additives are not healthier.
A known case of strategic misused and even making up terminology is the “enriched in calcium” label on products (found abundantly on dairy products in Israel). That label claims that that specific product has more calcium than a comparable product. While the claim might be true, and the product has some more calcium in it, the terminology used in the package (enriched) is misleading because by law there is no such thing as an enhanced amount of calcium and furthermore, that does not make the product healthier. Another very popular label is a label that states “enriched in vitamins” (popular on juices of any kind), that label again, makes people believe that the product is healthier although the vitamins that were added do not provide any sort of added nutritional value. Because when they are digested the body does not know how to use them, and they do not have any impact on the body.
Another example that acceptance of the mass does not make knowledge better is the theory of strict education that in the past, had been a widely accepted way of educating kids all over the world. Strict education was practiced in schools all over the world for centuries by enforcing extremely strict rules meticulously, and that led to educators enforcing rules by giving physical punishments to students. One of the most known physical punishments that were enforced was teachers hitting students with a ruler on the hand. While there’s no doubt that this punishment is physically harsh for the student, possibly the worst aspect of it was the mental issues it caused to the student. When the teacher would summon the kid to his/her desk, the student would feel extreme shame and guilt that often lead to him/her having mental problems that often caused academic deterioration, those problems wouldn’t have occurred if the student wouldn’t have been treated so horrifically without any mercy.
In this essay, I gave my opinion regarding the statement “The quality of knowledge is best measured by how many people accept it”. I dismissed the statement by reasoning my opinion on two areas of knowledge (natural sciences and human sciences). When I explored the statement from the natural sciences perspective, I came to the conclusion that although most people perceive scientific knowledge as facts, the minority of people that do not follow theories blindly without investigating, often come up with models and theories that are more knowledgeable than those accepted by the masses. Furthermore, in my research on the statement from the human sciences perspective, I reached the understanding that people’s knowledge can be manipulated by external factors and that psychologically, people occasionally come up with theories on fields like education and those theories can get very popular among all people from all cultures despite having no studies that back them up.
Bibliography:
- Earth’s shape-https://phys. org/news/2019-01-people-earth-flat. html
- ptemology/heloicenter=https://amazing-space. stsci. edu/resources/explorations/groundup/lesson/basics/g37/
