Knowledge is the state of knowing a fact through experience, study or observation and this fact has to be provable.

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Knowledge is the state of knowing a fact through experience, study or observation and this fact has to be provable. Everyone’s knowledge is diverse from the rest of us. For a fact to be considered knowledge by us, we have to accept it as truth otherwise they do not mean anything to us and not considered to be knowledge. Knowledge is a combination of facts our senses perceive (the five senses) and the way we evaluate them. Knowledge is ever changing and for something to be deemed as knowledge, it has to be accepted by majority of people in a society. While reading this paper the main point that you have to keep in your mind is that there is a vital difference between knowledge and belief. Both of them are not the same, knowledge is facts while Beliefs are assumptions that can be either true or false. If we could prove a belief, it would become a fact, which in turn means it would now be knowledge and no longer a belief.

        Knowledge can be acquired from a variety of sources and it is not always true that we have to verify something for it to be considered knowledge by most of us. By this I mean that consider all the knowledge you have gained in school, college and now in university, have you proved all the scientific facts told to you? Chances are not, because we make the assumption that the knowledge being told to us is true. So then why do we assume without proving it our self? The logic is that why would you want to reinvent the wheel again, it has been invented and now it’s up to you to accept the facts and make advances. Few intellectuals make the discoveries, others test them and if true, they are known to be facts thus becoming knowledge for all of us. If every one of us started from scratch, the world would have the same knowledge it did hundreds of years ago. Though this does not mean that we do not have the liberty to test the facts again, we do and scientific research is always open for anyone to challenge the facts. This is what I meant when I said that knowledge is ever changing from one period to another. Now the next question rising in my mind is that whom should we acquire knowledge from, meaning who are these trusted sources and why trust them? One major source for knowledge is the academic and research institutes around the world. Next would be family, friends and people we know around us. We know that we can not be deceived by academic and research institutes because once the facts are made public, they are verified by many parties. Suppose you were attending a lecture at the University of Lethbridge, you would assume that the knowledge being transferred to you is from a trustworthy source. Our assumption is so because there does not appear to be a valid reason why the lecturer would mislead us. Same goes for the family and people we can trust.

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So does this mean that knowledge is universal? I do not think so; recall that at the beginning of this paper I made a comment that knowledge is different for everyone of us and that facts are knowledge if they are accepted by majority of the people in a society. George Bush, the current president of United States of America believed that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons of mass destruction and the senate approved the war against Iraq because majority of the members considered this to be a fact too. On the contrary, citizens of Iraq felt that these facts ...

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