The Role Of Uniformity In Knowledge Acquisition: Analysis Of Religious And Indigenous Knowledge

Theory of Knowledge and Knowledge Acquisition

“Whithout the assumption of the existence of uniformities there can be no knowledge”. Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge.

Knowledge refers to the things which are authentic and genuine in contrast to opinion. Information is considered as appropriate to knowledge which can be always backed up by evidence. A statement cannot be considered as knowledge if it is not supported by evidence. Simply, knowledge can be regarded as the facts, information and skills which are acquired either through prior experience or education and the theoretical or practical accepting of the subject. In this assignment, the two areas of knowledge will be analyzed to throw light on the statement, ‘without the assumption of the existence of uniformities there can be no knowledge’. Theory of knowledge plays a major role by providing an opportunity to reflect on the nature of knowledge and how the knowledge is gathered based on information. By delving deep into the purposeful enquiry into the different areas of knowledge, TOK or theory of knowledge consists of questions only. The primary question will be “how do we know?” and others include what counts as evidence? How do we judge? What does the theory mean?  

Theory of knowledge or TOK helps in thinking to a real- life situation, while the essay takes the shape of a more conceptual beginning. It can be taken for instance that the essay can ask for claims that the methodologies were used for reproducing knowledge and dependent on the use of knowledge. The theory of knowledge intends to make us aware of the interpretation underlying in knowledge which includes personal ideological biases and those can be retained, revised or rejected. The theory of knowledge The areas of knowledge put stress on the division and categorization of knowledge that is possessed. There are eight areas of knowledge but for the sake of the given claim, religious knowledge and indigenous knowledge are the two significant points of discussion. Ferguson had written in his article that the line connecting religious freedom and discrimination is vague and often debatable. As per the common saying, religious knowledge is the belief and faith in God or an extreme power. Religion is an integral part of many human’s lives as it provides with the opportunity to learn about various thinking processes and the reason behind the global diversity in the society. With respect to religion, the knowledge question might be the arguments between the inseparability of ethics and religion and the extent to which knowledge about religion can be gained apart from faith. It has been mentioned in “WHAT IS RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE ? » 22 Aug 1941 » The Spectator Archive” that there are various expressions of religious ideas with regard to music, architecture, painting, literature and sculpture.  In terms of scope, religious knowledge has a number of common features such as holy books, places of worship, followers, sacred sense and so on. While applying the religious ideas, it can affect the behavior for further scrutinizing the role of religion and ethics. In terms of concept, language can be considered for depicting the elements and theories which are common to all religions such as prayer and worship. Again in terms of historical development, focus can be given on the origin and development of the religious knowledge system to consider the timely development of religious ideas. It can be contradicted that the religious knowledge system can pose an important effect on the personal knowledge of individuals (Wiebe).

Significance of Religious and Indigenous Knowledge

The other area of knowledge, i.e. indigenous knowledge refers to the knowledge system that is developed by the community in contradiction to the scientific knowledge. The indigenous knowledge forms the base for local level decision making within many communities. The knowledge that is inherent of the region or tradition is also termed as modern knowledge. The knowledge is applied in the form of indigenous methods such as weather forecasting by the farmers planning activities. This knowledge is passed on from one generation to the other generally by word of mouth or cultural rituals which form the basis for agriculture, health, education and many more. The people who use indigenous knowledge have an idea on sustainable living. The main objective behind using this knowledge is to appreciate the indigenous perspectives on the methods of combined living and using sustainable resources. This particular knowledge is embedded within the local communities which are crucial for subsistence and survival (Kovach).

The statement that is made by Mulkay in his book that knowledge bears a long history. It can be considered appropriate in relation with the given claim. There is no knowledge without the assumption of existence of uniformities and it is also a very important part of cognition. Moreover, existence of language is also impossible without the existence of uniformities. Language which is composed of words picks out classes instead of any particular entity. For instance, with the mention of a specific term such as ‘dog’, a variety of the same species is referred who share the same common features. Therefore, all the items in the specific category are uniform in some way or the other.  The characteristics can be specified with the addition of qualifiers or adjectives but these specific words are counted as categories. Therefore the common characteristic such as color is only used in language as it is perceivable in various situations and circumstances. In the science of knowledge, such characteristics are known as concepts, universals or invariant representations. The last term out of the three is preferable as it forms a bridge between idea and knowledge. Such simple idea can be one of the strong ideas in science as it leads the society to seek for invariants in the universe. The human brains also let the individuals find and make invariants in the n the world as well as within them.

It was argued by Ostrom that similar situations occur on diverse scales and the issues in commonness are no more settled by many individuals. There are certain types of knowledge that the brain tackles which do not involve language and sometimes not even uniformities. Another point that can be taken into consideration is that the cognitive processes of young people might involve such kinds of knowledge which will not be understood by the others. In the brain of the human beings, the process of viewing and remembering is compared to the system of anything stored beforehand in the memory. The content of the memories can be either true or false and are used as a substitute for the new memories. But it can be mentioned that there are few memories which are basic in form and that is the place where the memories of childhood is present.

Religious Knowledge and Uniformities

Fowler mentioned that in the human brain there is no empty space to include new ideas but that is not the same in case of children. Children have empty neurons and circuits where the memory can be stored. The individuals are born with plenty of neurons and most of those are used in the childhood for storing the incidents of lives. It can be mentioned that when the individual reaches in his teens the unused part of his neurons gradually wearies off. In the early life of an individual he is able to learn from knowledge that is not associated to the existing knowledge as there are spare neurons for doing the task of depiction. He individuals do not realize the formation of his childhood memories but it can be assured that the childhood knowledge does not involve words. However, the non- verbal memories or knowledge might have little contribution in the adults’ life and these same memories are the one that can be verbalized or easily thought about (Greco).

There is a possibility that very early memories are not dependent on the existence of uniformities. Moreover, the individuals should not be assumptive with the insistence that the uniformities do not exist as there is not much knowledge about the operation of childhood or adult memories. When the adult moves way from the phase of childhood, the hypothetical memories can be a substitute for the future memories so that the experience of knowledge without uniformities can exist. Neither there is any argumentative statement about the non- existence of the memories nor there is any proof of authentication. It can only be mentioned that wherever knowledge is lacking there is no scope of finding amazement (Palacios and Castorina).

The statement on the existence of knowledge without the assumption of uniformities is interesting. It can also be argued that the experiential knowledge does not need assumption. For instance, if an individual puts his hand on a burner, he learns that a disastrous burn will be the expected outcome. In such a case no knowledge of uniformity is required. This can be considered as indigenous knowledge too. But there is no scope of the individual to gain knowledge about the fact that the same incident might not happen again or it might happen with another burner.  A minimum knowledge is required if the individual wishes to make an upcoming application of the painful experience that he had. To gain knowledge about the uniform behavior of the universe, experiential knowledge can be gained by the individual or from a trustworthy and acceptable source. Thus, uniformity can be regarded as reality and knowledge is holding reality into useable forms for attaining goals at a higher level. The uniformity in behavior leads to production of knowledge. In support and contradiction to the given claim, a lot of assumptions have taken place along with the belief that uniformity exists as similar to the religious belief of the individuals. 

Ferguson, Taylor. “A Correlational Analysis On The Religious Knowledge And Religion Based Discriminatory Tendencies Of Adults Affiliated With Various Faiths.” (2016).

“WHAT IS RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE ? » 22 Aug 1941 » The Spectator Archive.” The Spectator Archive, 2017, https://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/22nd-august-1941/8/what-is-religious-knowledge-.

Wiebe, Donald. Beyond legitimation: essays on the problem of religious knowledge. Springer, 2016.

Agrawal, Arun. “Indigenous and scientific knowledge: some critical comments.” Antropologi Indonesia (2014).

Mulkay, Michael. Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (RLE Social Theory). Routledge, 2014.

Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the commons. Cambridge university press, 2015.

Fowler, Thomas B. “On the Evolution Controversy.” Intelligible Design: A Realistic Approach to the Philosophy and History of Science. 2014. 230-257.

Greco, John. “Testimony and the transmission of religious knowledge.” Epistemology & Philosophy of Science 53.3 (2017): 19-47.

Palacios, Mariana García, and José Antonio Castorina. “Studying children’s religious knowledge: Contributions of ethnography and the clinical-critical method.” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 48.4 (2014): 462-478.

Woodward, Andrew Ralls. Scientific Models for Religious Knowledge: Is the Scientific Study of Religious Activity Compatible With a” Religious Epistemology”?. Diss. 2016.

Kovach, Margaret. “Emerging from the margins: Indigenous methodologies.” Research as resistance: revisiting critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (2015): 43.

Christen, Kimberly. “Does information really want to be free? Indigenous knowledge systems and the question of openness.” (2015).