Acquiring Knowledge
People have used many methods to try to gain knowledge.
- By reason and logic (perhaps in cooperation with others, using logical argument).
- By mathematical proof.
- By the scientific method.
- By the trial and error method.
- By applying an algorithm.
- By learning from experience.
- By intuition (getting them from the subconscious).
- By an argument from authority, which could be from religious, literary, political, philosophical or scientific authorities.
- By listening to the testimony of witnesses.
- By observing the world in its "natural state"; seeing how the world operates without performing any experiments.
- By acquiring knowledge that is embedded in one's language, culture, or traditions.
- By dialogical enquiry (conversation). See Gadamer, Bohm, Habermas, Freire, on dialogue, learning and knowledge acquisition/negotiation: http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-dialog.htm
- By some claimed form of enlightenment following a period of meditation. (For example, the Buddhist enlightenment known as bodhi)
- By some claimed form of divine illumination, prayer or revelation from a divine agency.
Read more about this topic: Descriptive Knowledge
Famous quotes containing the words acquiring knowledge, acquiring and/or knowledge:
“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“A distinction of property results from that very protection which a free Government gives to unequal faculties of acquiring it.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Surely knowledge of the natural world, knowledge of the human condition, knowledge of the nature and dynamics of society, knowledge of the past so that one may use it in experiencing the present and aspiring to the future—all of these, it would seem reasonable to suppose, are essential to an educated man. To these must be added another—knowledge of the products of our artistic heritage that mark the history of our esthetic wonder and delight.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (20th century)