What is knowledge?
Today I argued with one layman on a theme “what really Knowledge is. A layman was in confidence, that Knowledge is understanding the fact, how the world is arranged. Obviously his confidence was based both on his own ideas and on that was told him by his school teachers.
It was necessary to let him down, explaining that nobody of people knows, how the world is arranged. It is already knowledge that we do not know the arrangement of the world. Moreover, the today’s state of Knowledge prompts, that we will never know how the world is arranged.
“At that rate, – my interlocutor said, “you are all simple deceivers and idlers. You live in temples having sweet life, having the use of our money that are earned by hard work. We give money in a hope on that you will be able to give help to us in everyday businesses. But if you know that you know nothing and never will know, then you are quacks and swindlers!”
“Wait”, – I told him. “Take it easy. Better tell me, when your daughter was ill and you came to the temple, did not we really helped her and did not bring her through the illness? Really do not you begin sowing in days which we prompted to you, and do not you get a greater harvest from that?
“But you know nothing!” – a layman insisted.
“Unright. We know nothing about that, how the world is arranged. But we know something about that, how it is possible to get certain results from this world. We know that our ideas of the world can not be right. Therefore we use them with a carefulness in order to treat illnesses and do life more comfortable. And when some day we find an error or inaccuracy in our ideas, we correct and specify them. But the corrected ideas also will appear inexact and useful for people to help them. Herein there is a great secret of the world.”