Moving in to different areas of knowledge, in early centuries, lots of things in many ways had been developed on the basis of belief. At that time, people had ignored a method in scientific processes. So people were all dependent on belief. They have developed lots of things based on belief and achieved some results from it. There were also human developments based upon these counterfeit ideas. The major example of this is doctors giving a placebo to their patients. People do not know the medicine given by doctor is a placebo and believe if they take the medicine, they will become healthy. Like this, even though belief was not the truth, lots of thing had been developed based on it and people had believed that is true. So now people call the period of time when the things were developed upon wrong belief as a period of magic.
Belief in ancient times could be said it was all based on the religion. So therefore lots of things have developed in many ways based on religion. For example in Christianity, people believed that the world was created by the God. After people became wealthier and received higher level of education, people started to create “doubts” towards religion. Coming back to my topic of whether doubt is a key to knowledge, doubting about what we already know and finding out new knowledge is shown in moving towards scientific knowledge from pure belief of religion. So people had thought of things made by religion in scientific ways and the things could not be proven in ways of religion. Hence, religion had gradually been weakened as so many critics of religion had appeared and promoted the conservation of critical thinking towards religion.
Before, it was illegal to deny knowledge made by religion with science. This had suppressed scientists at that time and taken their rights to say truths. However, as time passed by, scientists could speak out the knowledge based on science and prove some knowledge made by religion is false. These thinking have made radical development in science. Radical development could have appeared because scientists doubted false demonstration created by the religion. It was possible because doubt in science had used as a method to prove false knowledge is false.
For Example, Galileo Galilei had proven a false of thinking that was produced by religion. He had proven that the earth orbits the sun. He could have made a major role in the scientific revolution with the heliocentric theory. This theory was not accepted because people had believed the Ptolemaic theory at that time. Galileo Galilei could have died because he had assisted heliocentric theory. It is now proven that Galileo Galilei was right but it was denied from religion. Later, it was proven by other person again and heliocentric theory could be said as a true theory. Strong belief in early centuries kept away the scientific revolution in finding knowledge.
Also, for many years, there have been lots of debates of creation and evolution. The debates are about recurring theological and cultural-political dispute about the origins of the earth, humanity, life, and the universe. Before evolution theory was made, people all believed in god created human and places for them, also universe including the earth. Charles Robert Darwin is the main scientist who had “doubt” in creation and thought of evolution. He proved in scientific way and it could be believed by people surpassing belief in religion. So biology developed based on doubt and achieved lots of biological prove.
There would be lots of belief but the most powerful belief was religion. This had suppressed people to doubt about religion. Wrong belief had made some developments which could have be wrong but progressive. Like this, unproven theory had appeared a lot from religion. However, as shown from the examples above, doubting created new knowledge towards science.
Moving into history, there are two types of history. Which are finding past and re-analysis of the past. History in TOK is only re-analysis past. Re-interpreting history is seeking for coherence of reason and background of history. In this process, people can have different opinions of history as people see history by different point of views. So re-analysis history is not objective but subjective. It is simply said to analysis how and why the history had happened subjectively. History is thinking of chronology in terms of coherent. If we relate history with our own thinking then even the same history is given, a lot of different views could be gained by people. It could be different by ethnic group, countries, education, disparity of ages, and a position in them. Lots of things could be a reason that they could have different point of views in history. If no one was interested in distorted history, then there would be wrong historical truth. As people have their own thinking, therefore they doubt in historical truths.
I leant history of Korea before; the memorable history in which I leant was about Korea and Japan, when they were middle of World War 2. Everything in Korea had been ruined and destroyed by Japan to maximize their own benefit but not for Koreans. In my opinion, Japan was wrong in their actions and also they have caused World War 2, also, sacrificed Koreans for their own benefit. Most of people think that Japan was wrong, but the opinion of this history can be different to some others. Maybe some people in Japan could have opposite thoughts towards my opinion. Japan is now slowly sinking into the ocean and they had only one choice to overcome, which was conquering other countries. It could be reason for Japan why they caused WW2. Like this, re-analysing history could be different to each other due to some factors.
On the other hand, the Persian proverb “Doubt is the key to knowledge” is not valid in the developments in technology. When we compare technology with natural science, technology does not have beliefs in certain aspects nor needing to doubt if what said in the previous was true or not. Technology is change of paradigm. Here is the graph of development in technology. Just to make sure, this graph is not drawn in scale. See these parts where the lines are not connected to each other, these are called paradigm. The technology we use and the technological skills we have are not developed by doubts.
For example, in the olden days, TV was in black and white. The process between having black and white and inventing colour TV was not created by doubt. John Logie로지 Baird배리드 who invented colour TV did not doubt in invention of black and white TV to invent colour TV. It was just the process of new invention but this is not due to any doubts.
Finally I conclude my presentation. Even though this counterclaim argues that the doubt is not the key to knowledge, however, I believe that doubt does act as a key to knowledge. I think that if someone was to prove something wrong, then doubting about something will be the first step needed. As you won’t know if something is wrong or not, without any doubts of right or wrong. So next time you want to prove something new, go start doubting.