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Introduction

How Much of One's Knowledge Depends on Interaction With Other Knowers? Most of a person's knowledge comes from and depends upon interaction with others. Imagine a person who lives in a small windowless room with black walls and no light or doors, but only a tiny flap that food and drink is given through. How would this person have any knowledge of the outside world? How would he think of things if he knows no language? Would he know that he was a human, or that there were others? ...read more.

Middle

The teachers that teach them also may add in something that they have found out to the children's knowledge, as did the teachers who taught those teachers, and so on until the first teacher, whoever that was. Every new teacher, whether it is a parent, a friend, a stranger, or a professor, passes a little of the knowledge gained from their lives onto others, causing a sort of snowball effect that has gone on since the beginning of time. At times, some person finds something brand new that no one ever supposedly knew, which adds more and more to the snowball of knowledge going down through generations and cultures. ...read more.

Conclusion

Only a minute before entering this place, he considered himself knowledgeable of everything in the world, but found himself lacking. So, to gain more knowledge, he explores and encounters a hot stove. Not knowing that a stove is hot, he touches it, burning his hand. He now has the knowledge that stoves are hot and that he should not touch them. This is gaining knowledge from experience, proving that not all knowledge comes from others. Knowledge comes in a couple ways. You are born with instincts, which can be considered knowledge. You are taught by interactions with others in you life, and you can gain knowledge from living and experiencing. However, most knowledge does come from interactions with others. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge section.