Although our knowledge comes to grow through self-reflection, reasoning, and questioning of the existing knowledge and continuous learning, the life experiences of injustice, inequality, and ignorance that a young girl has faced during the coup greatest impact on my knowledge of what I know today.
Mr. Zhuangzi contributed to the important role of experience in his “ THE SECRET OF CARING FOR LIFE” story to be cheerful in our lives. In this story, Mr. Zhuangzi explained through Cook Ding’s character the different actions in the process of cutting an ox depending on life experiences by showing the evolved techniques that Cook Ding used in cutting the ox harmoniously. Through this storyline, the author Zhaungzi taught us about how experiences play a crucial role in facing our life challenges to overcome successfully. Continuously, the discussion of Socrates and Theatetus about knowledge was the ideal dialogue written by Plato in his “Theory of Knowledge” which was published around 368-369 BCE. The theme of the discussion between Socrates and Theatetus is centralized on the question of “What is knowledge”. In their discussion, Socrates used dialectical questioning to dip deeper into the essence of knowledge by asking questions about Theatetus. Furthermore, the author Mr. Carlo Rovelli has discussed the subject of science and scientific knowledge including scientific thinking centralized on the scientific Anaximander in Miletus in 610 BCE and his legacy. Continuously, Mr. Rovelli promoted the influence of Anaximander in the history of science and the difference between how people in the sixth century know what they know about scientific knowledge and the evolution of knowing what we know in each history of science. Additionally, the story of Frankenstein which is one of the masterpieces of the author Mary Shelley was published in 1818. In the story of Frankenstein, she described the character of Frankenstein as the creator of the monster who had the ambition of freeing people from disease and discovering the starting point of life. In addition, Shelley discussed the transforming behaviors of the monster under the circumstances of attacks in his environment over time. She also disclosed the consequences of isolation, lack of belongings, and attachments from the environment forced the character monster to commit the murder and crimes.
A young girl named Pi Co was born in a rural area of Sagaing Region of Myanmar. She finished up her high school education in her hometown and joined the University of Economics in Yangon (YUEco) without having specific goals in her life. In 2020 she had to take a break from YUEco because of the COVID-19 crisis. Continuously, she left her academic journey in YUEco to join the Civil Disobedience Movement during the coup without regretting her action. Within various distractions in her academics, she came to have a big dream of being an educated and good person to contribute to her community after she faced injustice, inequality, and lack of educational opportunities during the coup in her country.
In the discussion between Socrates and Theatetus about knowledge, Socrates served as a midwife like a woman who bears a baby invited to the new world, he promoted the new ideas of Theaetetus by asking questions of him. Moreover, he banned the unrelated and inappropriate answers from Theatetus like a midwife who makes an abortion for a pregnant woman. In the word critical thinking means asking critical questions about the situations and reasoning adding justification with facts. Continuously, the word scientific thinking is the process of asking questions, putting critical thinking, justifying the existing knowledge, and promoting a new hypothesis.
According to Mr. Zhuangzi’s “The Secret of Caring for Life”, we came to know the important role of learning the lessons from our life experiences in our lives and putting consciousness in our actions to win our life challenges. In the storyline, Mr. Zhuangzi encourages the strength of the pathway gained from the life experience that is beyond the ability of the skills in progressing our work through the character Cook Ding (2003). We could learn through Mr.Zhaungzi if we knew the right way to do it, we could overcome the challenges more successfully than we have just the skills. In the story, the character Cook Ding mentions the different long-lasting knives depending on different life experiences by exemplifying “A good cook changes his knife once a year—because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it” (Zhaungzi, 2003, para. 5). Through this example of Cook Ding, we could learn the power of experience in our lives by looking at Cook Ding’s knife, long lasting for many years. While the mediocre and the good cook changed their knives in a short time depending on their knowing of how to maintain their knives to be last longing, Cook Ding used his knife to last long for nineteen years by cutting the ox harmoniously knowing how to maintain his knife. We could synthesize that the way of knowing how to maintain Cook Ding’s knife is coming from the flow of the power of learning the lessons from the experience. Moreover, Cook Ding shared the way how he overcame the difficulties successfully when he added the consciousness in his actions “whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly” (Zhaungzi, 2003, para. 6). According to Cook Ding’s life experience, we can learn whatever we have the challenges and difficulties to face, we will need to calm and focus on the problem with consciousness and work in carefully to achieve our goals. Through the character Cook Ding, we came to know the power of learning the lessons from life experiences and adding consciousness to answering our life questions and achieving victory.
We know what we know and do not know through self-reflection of questioning and reasoning on what we have learned, adding the justification through Socrates and Theatetus’ discussion about knowledge. In the discussion about knowledge, Socrates served as a midwife who births the new ideas of the young Theatetus aborting the unrelated and false ideas in discussing “what is knowledge” (Cornford, 2013). Through Theatetus’s self-reflection depending on his life experience that knowledge is the process of knowing through perceiving in one area, he came to know that knowledge is not merely the reasonable statement of perception (Cornford, 2013). Moreover, Socrates’ reasoning on ‘knowledge is beyond the essence of perception’ is saying that everything in this world is constantly changing and we cannot say something is one thing while one believes something is big but it might be small for others. The self-reflection of Theatetus depended on his life experiences and Socrates’ questioning and reasoning promoted an answer that knowledge is beyond the perception while the perception is not accurate to resonate the essence of knowing the knowledge. Furthermore, Socrates’ critiques on ‘’knowledge is true judgment’’ pointed out that our judgments are not definite and need to be justified (Cornford, 2013, p. 100). Moreover, He exemplified with the block of wax compared to our memory that perception and learning imprints on the wax might produce imperfect impressions depending on the texture of the wax (Cornford, 2013). Through his critical reasoning and questioning of Theatetus, we got to know that knowledge is not just true judgment that needs to be justified, while one’s impressions come from confused memories that are not accurate and uncertain. Continuously, the effectiveness of critical thinking in knowing what we know is shown by Socrates’ reasoning on the statement of Theatetus’ “knowledge is true belief with an account” (Cornford, 2013, p. 125). While an account might be verbal or non-verbal and expresses one belief, it cannot satisfy the essence of knowledge. Finally, if we suppose that an account is a remark that could be distinguished depending on its characteristics apart from others, the general character of the brightest light of the sun might not help in distinguishing the sun from other bright things. According to the critical reasoning of Socrates, we could analyze that knowledge is not just true belief with an account while an account might be a personal belief and inaccurate that needs justification with critical thinking. Through the discussion about the knowledge of Socrates and Theatetus, we came to know the crucial role of self-reflection on what we learned adding justification, questioning, and reasoning to that.
According to Mr. In Rovelli’s publication “The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy”, we came to know what we know through continuous learning with scientific thinking embracing the uncertainty of the existing knowledge. While Newton’s collection of fundamental laws was recognized as the only law that showed the behavior of how objects moved in the nineteenth century, Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg discovered the limitation of Newton’s law in the twentieth century through continuous learning on Newton’s existing theory (Rovelli, 2011). Newton’s law was replaced with Einstein and Heisenberg’s laws of “general relativity and quantum mechanics” providing more accurate explanations of what Newton’s law failed to explain (Rovelli,2011, p. 49). Although people accepted that Newton was the most intelligent and luckiest person who could discover the collections of fundamental laws in that era, continuous learning as well as the scientific inquiry of Einstein and Heisenberg promoted people to transform their perception in seeing the world differently. Furthermore, with the continuous learning process of the next generation embracing uncertainties, the discovery of Einstein and Heisenberg’s theories will also point out the limitations of their theories in the future (Rovelli, 2011). Because of the discovery of new theories and limitations of the old theories that previous scientists could not, science can analyze the subject with uncertainty and uncertainty. However, embracing these uncertainties contributed to the communities to transform the better ways of the new development of technology. Through the process of continuous learning putting scientific thinking of questioning, reasoning, and embracing uncertainties on the existing theories and knowledge we came to know what we know today and see the development of the world.
We know what we know and do not know through the situations we have encountered in our environment. A young girl named Pi Co who was born in a rural area had to face various kinds of distractions in continuing her education during the coup. She lost her way to continue her education while she was staying in the war zone near her village where the connection was cut. The violent actions of the military such as the bomb explosions and shootings made her think to be safer than her continuing education. By seeing the unjust and unequal circumstances under the military government, she grew up with her big dream of being educated and a good person to contribute to her community. Moreover, she believed that trying to be educated and a good person to bring positive change in her community is a way to resist the military government. These big intentions forced her to continue her education journey and to learn what she did not know. With her enthusiasm and dedication to implementing her big dream, she accepted a chance to join the Leadership program with her project idea of “education for youths in rural war-torn areas” with her team. Since she was staying in a war zone for two years, she knew the lack of educational opportunities and networks was a big distraction for the youths to continue their education. With the project implementation, she believed that she could bring the quality of education to the hands of youths in rural war-torn areas. The unjust and unequal situations that she had to face in her environment encouraged her not only to know what she knew but also to take action. Currently, she is on the way to making her dream come true not only by trying to be educated standing from the right side but also by contributing to her community by learning the situations that she has encountered in her environment in a good way.
Continuously we know what we know and do not know, transforming ourselves according to the situations that we have faced in our environment from the character Monster in the story of “Frankenstein”. According to the story of Frankenstein written by Mrs. Mary Shelley, the character of the monster created by Frankenstein illustrates the way of changing his behavior through the situations that are shaped by his environment (Shelley, 2012). In this story, the author reached out to the audience about how the treatment of the people of the monster could transform the behaviors of the monster himself. At the beginning of the story, the creator Frankenstein himself screamed out to the animation of his creation Monster and ran away without taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions (Shelley, 2012). This behavior of avoiding responsibility is one of the reasons that taught the monster firsthand about his creator, Frankenstein. As the monster bears in a new life, he is learning new things that he experiences like a baby. At that time, getting the bad treatment of the people around his environment such as screaming, hitting, and throwing stones taught him how human society is cruel, feeling isolated, and lacking belonging. Moreover, it can be seen that although the monster tries various ways to make friends with the people such as helping the works of the human and contacting friendly with the human, the only thing that he gets back is the violations and attachments (Shelley, 2012). These situations that he encountered transformed him to commit crimes and murders without taking responsibility for his actions. Through the monster character, we can analyze how we transform our behaviors in time depending on the situations and shapes of our environment.
From the content of Zhaungzi’s Cook Ding, Theory of knowledge, Scientific knowledge, Frankenstein, and finally Pi Co’s life experiences, I have learned the essence of learning what we do not know with critical thinking and self-reflection on the lessons of what we have experienced, good or bad. As Confucius mentioned “Learning without thinking is dangerous”, I think we need to practice critical thinking more and more not only in learning new things but also in reflecting on the lessons learned to justify whether it is right or wrong and should carry on our future or leave them in the past (Confucius, 2019).
Evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing the content and concept of the sources, Profs Dan’s lectures, and sharing experiences to answer the question of “how do we know what we know and do not know” shook my thoughts not only just to write on the paper but also to carry on the lessons learned in real life. After completing my six parts of the QT rubric, I came to know that learning is a lifelong process not only to learn from others but also from ourselves by self-reflection on what we did by questioning and reasoning. In addition, I think we can not capture any lessons without putting self-reflection on ourselves. So, I have taken away to be consistent in continuous learning with questioning, reasoning, and self-reflection on what I got and learned.
We came to know what we know and do not know through our life experiences, self-reflection, critical thinking, and continuous learning. When it comes to reality, it is important to use it in building not only for the betterment of ourselves but also for our society through what we know and learn from these insightful practices. So, how do we carry on to take action in reality with our knowledge to bring positive change to our community?
References
Confucius. (2019). The Analects of Confucius (1st ed.). Heritage Books.
https://www.perlego.com/book/2912677/the-analects-of-confucius-pdf
Cornford, F. M. (2013). Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (1st ed.). Taylor and Francis.
https://www.perlego.com/book/1680455/platos-theory-of-knowledge-pdf
Rovelli, C. (2011). The first scientist: Anaximander and his legacy. Westholme Publishing.
https://z-lib.id/book/32248722-the-first-scientist-2
Shelley, M., MacDonald, D. L., Scherf, K., MacDonald, D. L., & Scherf, K. (2012). Frankenstein—Third edition (3rd ed.). Broadview Press. https://www.perlego.com/book/2029915/frankenstein-third-edition-pdf
Zhuangzi. (2003). Zhuangzi: Basic Writings ([edition unavailable]). Columbia University Press.
https://www.perlego.com/book/775745/zhuangzi-basic-writings-pdf