A book called ‘1984’ further helped me realize how dependent knowledge is on belief. ‘1984’ is about a totalitarian government that tries to manipulate everything. They manipulate everything from official data about the running of the government to even history. They even try to manipulate people so that they believe in everything they say. The reason they do this is that the people do not accept things they do not believe in. This was seen by the fact that the protagonist is always against the government. In the story he gets caught and is sent to prison, where he is made to believe in everything the government says. We see that once he begins to believe in the government he can actually see facts for the claims. For instance he is told that two plus two equals five. Therefore when the jailer raises two fingers on each hand, the protagonist sees five fingers. This is a work of literature. So it is extreme. However what it shows is that without belief evidences are hard to find. This may be the reason for lack of evidence for contradictory statements and hence it should not be dismissed without proper counter evidence.
Throughout time there have been a number of knowledge claims without evidence. One example of a knowledge claim, without evidence, is the use of the Pythagoras theorem before it was proven. Mathematics is based on deductive reasoning from a set of postulates or self-evident truths. Hence in math evidence is proof. The Pythagoras theorem was used extensively in fields such as astrology and architecture to find distances between stars and to make similar triangles in buildings so that the foundation would be string. The reason for its use without evidence was that there was the requirement of a system. Having a system, even though invalid was better than having no theory at all. Therefore it can be concluded that when there is no existing paradigm, and there is a need of knowledge, a plausible knowledge claim may be used without evidence.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf is, in my mind, an excellent example of a story that stresses on the importance of asserting something without evidence, that is still accepted. This reasserts the argument regarding security, but also shows that too many claims without any evidence to support them will ultimately result in the claims being dismissed without any evidence. Eventually, the boy paid for his folly with his life: when the wolf came to attack, the people of the village had been saturated by false claims about wolf attacks to take the boy seriously. Thus in matters of security and safety claims without evidence must be considered seriously, even though they may be tipoffs.
Many knowledge claims that may not be able to be justified simply by reason or are not accepted by many people are dismissed. One theory that was almost dismissed in this manner was Einstein’s relativity theory. It has a concept of time dilation, according to which time is relative, and is not a constant. This claim seems very absurd, according to common sense. It could not be justified by reason and it was against the view of everyone. It was going to be dismissed; however Max Planck, one of the greatest scientists ever, did not let this happen. He believed that the theory could be right. Observations of a solar eclipse in 1919 showed that the gravitation of the Sun deflects starlight—as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity from a few years before. Unlike mathematics, science is based on inductive reasoning; hence it is more susceptible to change. Since science is based on inductive reasoning, particular examples act as evidence. Hence the deflection during the solar eclipse was evidence for the validity for Einstein’s theory. Many other supporting evidences were found later, from the use of atomic clocks and other sophisticated technology, and this theory became widely accepted. This theory is used to explain the mass defect in nucleus of atoms and many other important claims in the field of physics. So it is currently one of the most important theories in understanding the universe. From this example we can see that in subjects like science where knowledge is gained mainly by induction, knowledge claims cannot be dismissed, even though there is no supporting evidence, as long as there is no counter evidence and the claim is coming from an expert in the field. The reason is that in the future supporting evidences may be found, and so by not dismissing knowledge claims, we are speeding up the process of pursuit of knowledge. However this does not imply that knowledge claims without evidence should be accepted, it implies to keep these theories in mind while performing experiments. The reason for this is that our perception is biased and sees only what we expect to see.
Another example of this is complex numbers. I stumbled across this concept during math class and wondered how could imaginary numbers be useful. Most people would have the same opinion due to the fact that according to simplistic reasoning, imaginary numbers cannot give real knowledge. This is why it was very commonly in the past. However in reality it has a number of real life uses. By showing that something is equal to a complex number that is not real, acts as a method of disproving and hence complex numbers are actually pretty useful. It has been used to prove that it is impossible to trisect an angle using just a compass and a device to draw straight lines. Being able to trisect an angle was something mathematicians were trying to do for centuries. Hence by disproving this, human resources were diverted towards fields in math thereby speeding up the pursuit in knowledge. Furthermore complex numbers can also be used to represent two dimensions. Hence it is used extensively in engineering. In general it can be concluded that knowledge claims that cannot be justified by reason simply or are against the common opinion of the people should not be dismissed, unless there is concrete evidence against the claim. The reason being that in the future, evidences for some of the knowledge claims may be found.
So in a nutshell, knowledge depends upon beliefs and evidences for a knowledge claim may be discovered in the future. Therefore I do not agree with, “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” I believe that if the knowledge claim comes from an expert than it can only be dismissed with counter evidence. This does not mean that it should be accepted and used. It should only be accepted and used either if there is the need for a system, due to no existing system, or when sufficient evidence is found.
Reference:
Belief quotes & quotations. (n.d.). Find the famous quotes you need, ThinkExist.com Quotations. Retrieved January 16, 2013, from
Dykla, J. (n.d.). Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Retrieved January 11, 2013, from
Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. (n.d.). Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Retrieved January 11, 2013, from
Samkit Shah DP Candidate 002120-028