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 is mainly based on assumptions and predictions. An example of this is the weather forecast; every day meteorologists predict how the weather will be the next day, based on science and technology they make predictions on how the state of the atmosphere will be in the future. The weather forecast will never be 100 percent correct, as the predictions may fail when the future becomes the present. We can never know what will happen tomorrow, so our knowledge about the future is limited. Our approach to knowledge about the future is almost like our approach to knowledge about science, we can have hypothesises for what we believe will happen if we react one element with another, but we can never know for sure what will happen until the reaction has reached completion. But hypothesises are seldom made without theory to support them; scientific hypothesises are generally based on previous observations or extensions of scientific theories. The more theory behind a hypothesis, the more reliable it is, and that counts for hypothesises about our future as well.
To make hypothesises about the future, there has to be done a lot of research. Through analysing the past and the present, assumptions can be made on what will happen in the future. If we look at the weather forecast again, hypothesises can be made by analysing the state of the atmosphere. By comparing the state of the atmosphere today and its state in the past, assumptions can be made on how variables, such as high pressure and low pressure, can affect the weather tomorrow. But this will only be hypothesises; only the future can show us if we are correct in our assumptions.
But when discussing knowledge about the future also ethical issues comes up to mind, what can we do to make the best of it? It is incorrect to say that we know that exactly what the future will bring us, but what we can do as humans is to prevent expected disasters and improve human situations. The future will always depend on present situations and actions, we have the power to prevent a bad future for this planet, and if we do something today hypothesises about our future has to be changed. So the future is never final, whatever we do today will have an impact on the future. We can try to make the best of it and prevent hypothesises that we do not want to be fulfilled. This can also be explained by the term “causation” which stated that there is a relationship between one event and another, of which the second event is the direct consequence of the first. The causation term can also be called the cause and effect theory as it states the relationship that one event will always be the consequence of another.
Such preventions happen today, scientists have predicted that if we continue to release the same amount of carbon dioxide gas and chlorofluorocarbon gases into the atmosphere it will be crucial to the Earth in the future. But we can prevent this future for the Earth, if we are aware that what we do can make a difference, we have the power to change the future. In contrast, we do not have the power to change our past. The events of our past have already happened, and we are not able to change them.
So our knowledge about the past is much more certain than that of the future as its events already has happened. The truth of our past can be found if we just read, search and analyse enough. It is easier for us to trust our knowledge about the past than our knowledge about the future, but it is important to keep in mind that even though the evidence tells us one thing, there might actually be more to the story. Some parts of the history will always be lost, as many people may have died or been killed before they were able to tell their side of the story. The truth about an event will never be fully exposed before everyone who experienced it has told their side of the story.
Even though we never can trust our knowledge about the past as we never will know the whole story, there are some knowledge claims that are more trustworthy than others. An example of this is that we are much more certain of what happened during the Vietnam War in 1963 than what happened at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. It is easier to find out what happened 42 years ago than what happened 979 years ago.
As a conclusion it can be said that even though our approach to knowledge, both about the past and the future, are very closely linked, but at the same time very different. Neither the knowledge about the past nor the knowledge about the future can be trusted 100 percent as there are many factors that limit the accuracy of them. Our knowledge about the past is based on evidences of previous events, and we do not have the power to change the events of the past as it has already happened. On the other hand, our knowledge about the future is based on hypothesises and assumptions. The knowledge we have about our future are only predictions of how we believe tomorrow will be like, and if we do not like the predictions we have the power to change our future. And there will always be some knowledge about both our past and our future that are more correct than others; these are the knowledge claims that are backed up with more research and theory than the others.
Bibliography:
Book:
Waugh, Steven. Essential modern world history,
Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes Ltd
Websites:
Wikipedia
“Weather”
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Accessed: February 11, 2009
Wikipedia
“Hypothesis”
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Accessed: February 11, 2009
Wikipedia
“Causality”
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Accessed: February 11, 2009
Steven Waugh, Essential modern world history, (Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes Ltd, 2001), 438
Wikipedia, “Weather”, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, , Accessed: February 11, 2009
Wikipedia, “Hypothesis”, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, , Accessed: February 11, 2009
Wikipedia, “Causality”, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, , Accessed: February 11, 2009