Be a seeker of knowledge

Both, students and adults follow various courses of studies. Very often their studies are targeted at examinations or promotions in their careers.

What happens most of the times is that they work hard and pass examinations.

Only a very few of them will study a subject for the sake of improving their knowledge. In other words, most of us are not seekers of knowledge. On the contrary our search of knowledge ends when we are happily ensconced in a cushy job.

What is knowledge? If you know the date of your birth, that is hearsay knowledge. You go by the birth certificate issued by an authorized person and you think that was the day you were born. Due to some clerical error, this date can be wrong. However, you accept it as your date of birth as there is no alternative.

When you fall sick, you go to your family physician. He will do a thorough check and give you a prescription. You take the medicine and say that you are now ok. However, have you ever wondered whether the physician knew the cure by adopting any scientific approach? Very often the physician relies on the general impression that what he prescribes usually works in a given situation. This is a kind of vague knowledge.

You look at the sun and say that it is an immense object in the sky.

However, you had no way of comparing the sun with other planets. In addition, you may have read that the sun is the largest planet in the universe. This is a kind of knowledge you get from reasoning.

You will be lucky if you learn the facts of something by directly observing or perceiving it. For instance, you only see the hand of someone travelling in a railway compartment. And you immediately conclude that the hand belongs to a girl. In philosophical terms, you decide that the whole is greater than the part.

According to Plato's theory of knowledge, each level of knowledge has its objects and its own methods for knowing them. Naturally, in all these methods there are limitations.

Hume was one of the noted philosophers who tried to discover the limits of knowledge. Over the decades, his theory is now becoming clear even to the layman. As far as our knowledge of the world of facts is concerned, we are limited to our atomistic impressions and their corresponding ideas. These impressions and ideas appear repeatedly in our experience. However, we have no way of learning what causes them. What is more, we have no knowledge that an external world exists, that physical substances exist, or that God exists because we have no sensory impressions of any of them.

For a moment, think of the savages who lived millenniums ago. Their acquisition of knowledge was enforced by the necessities of life. The mind of most of the savages was fully developed. For instance, many North American Indians possessed a high degree of intelligence before the advent of European settlers. Although the average North American Indian had no formal education, he was surrounded by nature's multifarious creations. He probably found that some of those creations were good for him; others not so profitable. Nature provided him with water, air and food in the form of edible fruits and vegetables. But he had to fight the forces of evil coming in the form of fierce animals and various diseases. Being a hunter and an inhabitant of the woods, he knew the dangers lurking there. Most of the time, he knew how to avoid dangerous situations. His basic reaction was to fight or flee from the danger.

The savage had to kill animals and eat their flesh. Gradually he added to his knowledge the figures, colours, and the cries of animals. Then he learnt how to ensnare, entice, or waylay the animals.

After a long time, he turned his attention to vegetables and other crops. Instead of killing animals and eating their flesh, he began to look after a herd of cattle or flock of sheep. He also began to cultivate a plot of land by clearing the jungle.

Then he knew how to trace a path through the dangers and immensity of nature.

After many thousands of years, the hunter became a shepherd or herdsman and then a farmer. Not stopping there he entered the Industrial Age. This shows the process and expansion of acquiring knowledge.

Today the civilized man knows what knowledge means. It means the facts, information, understanding and skills that a person has acquired through experience or education. Some people have a limited knowledge of certain subjects. Others have a detailed knowledge of particular subjects.

Although no one can learn everything under the sun, we must try to expand our knowledge. It is a pity that we put an end to the pursuit of knowledge when once we pass some examination or get a highly paid job.

For instance, I have heard of a university lecturer who had dictated the same set of notes on History for more than 20 years! He never wanted to update his knowledge and the notes.

When I come across half-baked English tutors and unenthusiastic university lecturers, I am reminded of Alexander Pope's brilliant poem entitled 'The Critic's Task'. Here are the opening four lines"

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again."

Those who profess to know a particular subject and in fact do not know even its rudiments are killing the enthusiasm of students. They are doing the greatest disservice to humanity.

If you decide today to be a seeker of knowledge, you will help all of us to be freed from the fetters of ignorance.