compare and contrast our approach to knowledge about the past and our approach to knowledge about the future

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Theory of Knowledge, 2009

Prescribed title number 6

 

Compare and contrast our approach to knowledge about the past with our approach to knowledge about the future.

Maria Stormo

003549102

Arendal videregående skole

February 2009

Our approach to knowledge about the past and our approach to knowledge about the future are very closely linked, but yet very different. Our approach to knowledge about the past is mainly based on analysing evidence of past events. To gain knowledge about the future, you have to make hypothesises and assume how the past and the present can influence the future. We can never be 100 percent sure that our knowledge either about the past or the future is correct, we always have to be aware of limitation to this knowledge. We can in a way say that by comparing knowledge about past and future, we are comparing knowledge about evidence and knowledge about assumptions.

Our past is our history, hence we can say that our knowledge about the past is knowledge about history. There will always be limitations to our knowledge about history, to approach knowledge about history we have to analyse sources to find out what actually happened but we can never completely rely on the facts that one source is telling us. There are always several sides to the same story, it is therefore very difficult to gain knowledge about history. You always have to take all sides into account and in addition the sources may be biased and not that trustworthy, a third limitation to the sources may be that details of events may have been lost in translation – which makes the approach to knowledge about history even harder. But even though sources may not be that trustworthy they can be useful for historians, they can give a picture on how for example propaganda and censorship was used to gain the peoples support. An example of this is this picture of Stalin and Lenin:

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Lenin did not want Stalin to be his successor; his initial wish was that Trotsky should be the new leader of USSR. But Stalin’s tactics made sure that everyone believed that he himself was Stalin’s close follower. He made sure that Trotsky did not come to Lenin’s funeral, and in addition he manipulated himself into photos to lie about how close he was to Lenin. This picture is one of those manipulated pictures where Stalin has been added to the frame after the actual event. The picture is from 1922. 

To gain knowledge about the future, our approach ...

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