An obvious question one could ask himself/herself states: What about a blind man? This is a quite difficult question to answer, to answer it we will have to ask ourselves: what do we actually mean by “sight”. If we interpret it the scientific way we can say that the blind man has no sight, since no light which is entering the eyes is being interpret correctly. If we look at it in an different way by interpreting “sight” to be analyzing what is around us, the blind man will have sight, since he can analyze specific objects, however he will need different sources “organs” to do so, for instance his hands.
We know blue is blue, since we were told when we where little that the color we see is blue. Our sight was matched with what we know to be blue. Our knowledge is being matched with our sight, so that we know what something is. If one of these organs also known as “sources” does not work, or doesn’t work properly a faulty image can be created. To prevent a faulty image to be created it is good to depend on both sources instead of only calling knowledge a true organ of sight. When taking this in account it can be said that the quote by Panchatantra “Knowledge is a true organ of sight, not the eyes” might not be fully correct, since the human depends on both the sources, knowledge and sight. It therefore only applies till a certain extent.
When we relate this quote to science a whole new view gets created, when we look at biology we can see that observation by eye sight is needed to gain knowledge most of the time. Eye sight is initially needed for the first researchers to have gained this information. How would we have had all this knowledge if we did not find it out initially, it was initially found out by observing by eye, and therefore the eyes can also be seen as a true organ of sight. If eye sight was not available human beings would not have gained a lot of knowledge, and therefore human beings have to rely on both sources of sight and not just one.
For facts; known things, one could say that knowledge is the only true organ of sight. This because if one does not know red is red he/she could call if differently. The color red had to bed named initially to see it as being red; we depend on our knowledge to tell us it’s red. When looking at something new, something that is not factional we depend on our eyes to tell us these facts, these facts are told to us by having other knowledge which can define what is happening or what is seen. Yet again we can see that if one of the sources is missing a faulty image can be created.
As said in previous paragraphs, the quote is simply incomplete because it fails to take into consideration the fact that without at least some previous knowledge what one will see make no sense at all. What we see becomes relevant due to the knowledge we have, but if one had no initial knowledge nothing would be relevant, therefore knowledge was gained thru initial analyzation by different sources. These sources, in Panchatantra quote seen as organs, in my opinion consist of anything that helps contribute to creating the full image. These organs can consist of knowledge, eyes, nose, hands, and ears. All these organs since I think all these factors contribute to making an image of something. I do not think sight only consist of knowledge considering everything that is stated above.
If we look at which “organ” plays the biggest role in creating an image I do think there is one that sticks out, and plays a major role. I believe this organ to be knowledge, knowledge plays one of the bigger, more important roles in my opinion. This because we cannot neglect the fact that when one is born in a modern time like now, one is stacked with huge amounts of available knowledge. It has taken thousands of years to gain this knowledge but now with this huge amount of available knowledge, our sight has learned to use it. When this knowledge was not available, one could not depend on our knowledge mostly to develop our sight, therefore it would need, what can be seen as more primitive ways of creating sight.
By looking at all of the previous examples one might conclude that knowledge is incredibly a better organ of sight than the eyes, it is more fundamental, however to say that the eyes are not an organ of sight would be wrong. This would be wrong, since a lot of knowledge is achieved by observing with your eyes. All of the known knowledge did not come naturally it had to be observed or found in a different way initially. If one of the organs is not working properly for instance when one believes blue to be red a faulty image will be created as said before, therefore both organs are dependent on each other, and both needed to have sight. I found it nice to look at it as a body; a body has various organs, some more important ones than others, but when one of the organs malfunctions an error will occur; therefore we cannot neglect a single organ like knowledge, or eyes. All organs have a certain importance to them and they all apply till a certain extent.
