Which sources of knowledgebooks, web sites, the media, personal experience, authorities or some other - do you consider most trustworthy, and why?
Which sources of knowledge—books, web sites, the media, personal experience, authorities or some other - do you consider most trustworthy, and why?
The human hunger for knowledge will never be satisfied. This is why people utilize various sources such as books, web sites, the media, and personal experiences to gain a greater understanding of the world. From the afore mentioned sources of knowledge, all of them are secondary except for one’s personal experiences, meaning that the knowledge we obtain is from other people’s research and observations. There are many limitations to both these types of knowledge (primary and secondary) when assessing which source is the most trustworthy. Although, before assessing which source is the most trustworthy, we must first define what trustworthy knowledge is and how we can recognize it. One normally equates trust with the truth, as defined by a source’s credibility and reliability. If a source is seemingly reliable, we may say that it is true and thus we can trust it. Another basis to take into consideration is whether the knowledge gained is supported by positive evidence and whether the knowledge is coherent (fits in with our current understanding of things). If both these criteria are present, we can deem the source of knowledge to be trustworthy. Thus, one can determine and recognize which source is the most trustworthy by basing them on guidelines of truth (reliability and credibility), evidence, and coherence.
One of the oldest and too a certain extent nowadays obsolete source of knowledge are books. Books, written by authorities on the subject, seem like viable and trustworthy sources of knowledge, as one would expect the authors to be experts in their respective fields. This source can give us knowledge about historical events, scientific discoveries, or even experiences of the author, but what the reader must always keep in mind is that the author is writing from his perspective and research. There can be many biases attributed to this; such as if the author was writing about a historical event social bias could be present. The famous quotation, “History is written by the winners” usually attributed to be have said by Alex Hayley, outline this type of bias as the source might reflect the interests of perspective of one particular social group rather than society as a whole, giving the reader a distorted picture of things. Even though the evidence provided might support the event and the knowledge might fit in with what we believe to know (coherence), the point of social bias attacks the reliability (truth) of the source and thus the source might not be trustworthy. Moreover, experts are fallible and some books may be outdated to keep up with new knowledge that is discovered such as in the natural sciences. For example, from 1923 to 1955 it was commonly agreed upon that human beings had 24 pairs of chromosomes as a Texan biologist, Theophilus Painter, had miscounted them under a telescope. No one had bothered to recount the number and this simple mistake had spread this false knowledge mostly through books. Today we know that human beings in fact have 23 pairs of chromosomes and not 24. Thus, books may not be a trustworthy source, due to various biases and the fallibility of experts.
