Definitions of Knowledge Essay -- Philosophy Papers

As Walker Percy explores the dogfish of science and knowledge in his essay, The dismission of the Creature, I wonder if he realizes how nonstick and feisty the topic squirming on his desk is. Although anyone who has taken a guided hobble will surely agree that the traditional tourist experience is inescapably divorced from that of a discoverer, the broad epistemological claims that Percy extracts from this scenario seem more manifold than Percy gives them credit, or space, for. When Percy suggests that an single(a) should aim to extract the thing from the package, he insists that the individual seek out some solid bedrock downstairs the arise of cognizance (519). In this statement, he implicitly calls the reader to believe that such(prenominal) bedrock exists and is accessible to humans, a controversial position in the postmodernist world.By arguing that excavation towards a static and fixed wolf is possible, Percy echoes the voice of Plato, who argues that humans sho uld strive to know the essential forms lying beneath ephemeral existence. Plato and his mentor, Socrates, devised their theory of forms in large part to reconcile a constantly changing physical universe with the criterion of permanence natural in the Greek definition of knowledge, an important problem for philosophers of the time, and still today. In other words, the Greeks, believing that only permanent and unchanging entities could truly be known, needed a way to attain knowledge in sporting of a constantly changing natural world. With the forms, Plato provided a solution to this problem, formula that beneath the physical world a human perceives there exists a dimension of forms, or essences, which persist throughout time, independent of human perception but ... ...ans or dogfish. Like the physicist, they can benefit from recognizing elements of uncertainty inborn in the creature. In a way, the postmodern knower is much standardized the man in Percys essay, who takes the Gra nd Canyon bus tour as an exercise in familiarity (513). He intakes the same interpreted information as those who are on the level below him, yet he recognizes its limitations and understands what he sees all the more because of this awareness.Works CitedHeisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy The Revolution in Modern Science. New York Harper & Row, 1958.Bartholomae, David and Anthony Petrosky, eds. Ways of Reading. 3rd Ed. New York Bedford, 1995.Percy, Walker. The Loss of the Creature. Bartholomae and Petrosky. 423-436. Tompkins, Jane. Indians Textualism, Morality and the Problem of History. Bartholomae and Petrosky. 584-601.