BBT Week 9

Friday, October 11th, 2013

"The more connections and interconnections we ascertain, 

   the more we know the object in question."

                                      -John Dewey

There are more than one way to interpret this quote. And this is because of not only the quote, but also knowledge. The thing is, for any quote, the interpretation depends on the context it is presented it. Depending on the textual context of the quote, depending on the mood of the reader, depending on many other factors. The way that I interpret this quote is that Dewey believes the more connections we make, the broader our perspective, the more comprehensive and complete our scope of the world is, the more we will ultimately understand the world around, as we will have a better understanding of what happens. The more stories we receive and understand (as in are able to interpret and analyze, to connect with what we already know and grasp), the more specifics we will know about the subject we are studying and the better we will comprehend it. 

I am going to say that I do not necessarily agree with this quote. I think that finding out more, making new and more connections, usually has the opposite effect of raising more doubts and questioning what we had thought, our knowledge. This is because more connections help open more views, more insights, more stories (referring to last week). Well, let me ask a rhetorical question: Don't we feel more doubts when we talk with others? Don't we get more questions when we find out more information? Oftentimes, the further the path of knowledge we travel, the more questions will arise as we observe the unknown territory.

At the same time, as I listened to the others during our class discussion, I came up with a different view. I realized that there are two categories of ways to define knowledge. Knowledge can be seen as a state of certainty. In this case the quote is not valid. The more knowledge we gain, the more uncertainty we may have because new information leads to questioning of past knowledge. knowledge can be seen as the facts that we gather, the information we gain. Under this definition, the quote is valid. The more connections we ascertain, the more information and evidence we gather, then the more awareness we will have of the world around us. The more data we have, the more knowledge we are going to have. On the other, knowledge can be seen as the facts that we gather, the information we gain. Under this definition, the quote is valid. The more connections we ascertain, the more information and evidence we gather, then the more awareness we will have of the world around us. The more data we have, the more knowledge we are going to have. Even if we are uncertain and confused from the gained information, we nonetheless have new information, an addition to the knowledge we had before. After listening to arguments from both sides, I realized that both sides are correct, appropriate according to the context they are presented in. Again, this made me reflect upon the importance of defining the key terms and concepts that are involved when we are in an argument, in the process of explaining something.