Humans are incredibly narrow-minded. Part
of this comes from the slow process of developing knowledge in the specific areas
of knowing, and later trying to agree on it as a group. Most humans are
individually specified in only one of the areas of knowledge. Meaning they
spend decades of studying, research and hard work to develop strong skills in only
one of the AoK. After that specific strength is developed, it becomes the most
common lens in which the human can perceive the world with. This example is
visible amongst mathematicians versus other other people. Mathematicians
believe everything in the world is mathematical, yet they fail to recognize
that it is this way because humans have created mathematical rules. In other
words, the world seems related to math from every aspect because we have
manipulated the rules to work in a way that apply to the all the elements
around us. An evidence for this statement is the fact that we change our laws
or theorems if they do not apply to our surroundings, or come up with the concept
of “exceptions” if we fail to apply our rules to a particular scenario. These narrow-minded
arguments can also be seen amongst the people that are specified in the same
AoK. For instance, biologists, chemists, and physicists are all specialized in
natural sciences, but because they have developed strength in only one of those
areas (or approached each area differently) they fail to see all three areas
working collectively and most times try to convince others what is considered
the most important area in science. These examples apply to the quote where the
“hammer” is the area of strength a person develops and the “nails” are the
different aspects in he world around us. This shows us how the different WoK we
use to develop our strength in an area of knowledge effects how we perceive all
AoK. We all perceive the world through the lens that is most familiar or
understandable to us, bringing us back to the idea that we see the world and
its problems the way that we want to see it.
I thought about this in a similar way but I didn't think about it with our careers which is super interesting that you brought that up! So if scientists and mathematicians see the world in one way do historians and literary oriented people do this as well? I think they don't as much because history and literature can include a lot more areas of knowledge than math and science; therefore, they use more tools and are a bit more balanced.
ReplyDeleteI like your example about people viewing the world through a mathematical lens. However, I would disagree with your point that people consider the world to be entirely mathematical because they were the ones to create mathematical rules. Humans never really created mathematics; humans only discovered it. There is nothing in math that you can create. Math is a system of logic in which there is not necessarily "new knowledge". It is only opened up to humans in the form of a discovery. So for example, Pythagoras was famous for the Pythagorean theorem. However, he did not necessarily create the rule of the relationship of the sides of a triangle to its hypotenuse. This pattern was already established, but Pythagoras was the one to discover it and name it as a theorem. He did not create the rule, he merely discovered it. Also, I do not think that people change mathematical laws or theorems. A theorem is a logical argument based on widely accepted statements, called axioms. These theorems themselves do not change; the purpose of a theorem is that it is universally applicable. However, mathematical properties can play a role in shaping the theorem. So for example, the process of proof by mathematical induction is a way to prove that a certain conjecture is true. Mathematical induction operates by determining if the conjecture is true for the entire domain of the original conjecture. Limiting the domain is not an "exception", since the applicability of it relies on the limits of the original conjecture.
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