Man owes every knowledge of him to his own inherent sources !
If we look at human-knowledge, individually at each piece of it, and wholly as a grand-storage of it, it owes everything to his inherent sources. There is no dispute about its chief source- our external senses-both in the past as well as in the present time. The dispute will only be about its 'organization' and integration aspect. Man always attribute this organization and integration aspect of knowledge to his own intellectual prowess ! It was he who observed and studied nature's various symmetrical patterns,categories and probabilities, and helped the formation of laws and theories that gave shape his fundamental knowledge forms! Can we credit the said achievements to man's intellectual, or rational prowess ?
We usually credit Aristotle with the earliest forms of classification and patternization of various objects of nature; he studied plants and animals and classified them into certain sensible categories based on similarities and characters. Such sensible classification and organization was the primary form of knowledge and science.
How did Aristotle and his successors manage to ascertain the unity and order between various species of plants, flowers, seeds and animals ? The answer is simple. Man indeed possessed an inherent faculty that supplied the much required 'sense' of unity and order between observed data and facts. Whether you call it intellect, understanding or reason, it is also an inherent internal faculty of man, exactly in the line of his external sense organs like eyes, ears or nose. We must notice and admit that, these external sense organs provide us a very particular, very specialized and very controlled realm of reality, just fit enough to weave a certain kind of reality around us that we later called 'phenomena'. If the hearing range of our ears were quite different, and if we could hear even the ultrasonic range of audio signals too, our reality of world would have been unimaginably different ! Similar is the case of eyes too; if we could see every micro-organism in our environment, our lives won't have been same as of now ! Similar is the case with our other sense organs like nose, tongue and skin. It is obvious that what we see, hear and smell are not the absolute whole of reality, but a predestined, predetermined, and pre-designed realm of it, perhaps specially meant to give us a particular realm of reality !
We can not discard the presence of a similar, specially chosen inherent faculty that used to provide us with the sense of 'unity' and 'order' between what we see and hear too; the faculty of intellect, understanding or reason. If what the external sense organs provide us is specially chosen range of reality, how could the 'orderly' relation or 'unity' sensing faculty between what we see and hear could be different and absolute in any respect ? Without doubt, the kind of 'order' or unity or 'consistency that we are equipped to 'sense' between the data that our external sense organs provide should also be a pre-chosen, pre-designed and pre-determined kind !
When a snake bit a man in the primeval jungle and its subsequent consequences, those in the then community had made a certain theory of probability about snake bites. His inherent 'sense of making sensible relation' with a currently observed event with every such possible incident in future was the crude beginning of future sciences. To argue that it was my eye that saw, and my ear that heard, and it was my intellectual ability that made sensible relations between what I have observed could be only a narrow and self-chosen way of looking at the world and judging it. Such ways of looking at the world doesn't make 'sense', if judged using our one and only and final faculty of deciding sense and nonsense about what we do and observe.
Accepting the existence of such inherent 'sense' making faculty within us only will make 'sense'. When looking at all our knowledge storage from the above seen angle, we will realize that we owe everything to our own inherent sources and faculties and not to our special intellectual prowess. Of course man has been bestowed with exceedingly better degree, or better quality such faculties than the members of other animal species, and it made us exceedingly different and superior to them.
The attempt of this small note was NOT to belittle man's intellectual achievements. This was aimed at making him more humble and realistic about what is really his own, and what belong to nature.What we have discussed above poses a serious question; as to how 'free' is man's free-will ?
Share our blogs that explain the above referred special features of our faculty of reason at links: http://thesparkleofhumanreason.blogspot.in/
http://philosopherskorner.blogspot.in/
http://thewhyquestionofexistenceanswered.blogspot.in/
Authored by :
Abraham Joseph
www.conscienceofthesociety.com : a philosophic non-profit organization that do freelance research into reason, mind and self.
contact us at : ajoseph1@rediffmail.com
conscienceofthesociety@hotmail.com
If we look at human-knowledge, individually at each piece of it, and wholly as a grand-storage of it, it owes everything to his inherent sources. There is no dispute about its chief source- our external senses-both in the past as well as in the present time. The dispute will only be about its 'organization' and integration aspect. Man always attribute this organization and integration aspect of knowledge to his own intellectual prowess ! It was he who observed and studied nature's various symmetrical patterns,categories and probabilities, and helped the formation of laws and theories that gave shape his fundamental knowledge forms! Can we credit the said achievements to man's intellectual, or rational prowess ?
We usually credit Aristotle with the earliest forms of classification and patternization of various objects of nature; he studied plants and animals and classified them into certain sensible categories based on similarities and characters. Such sensible classification and organization was the primary form of knowledge and science.
How did Aristotle and his successors manage to ascertain the unity and order between various species of plants, flowers, seeds and animals ? The answer is simple. Man indeed possessed an inherent faculty that supplied the much required 'sense' of unity and order between observed data and facts. Whether you call it intellect, understanding or reason, it is also an inherent internal faculty of man, exactly in the line of his external sense organs like eyes, ears or nose. We must notice and admit that, these external sense organs provide us a very particular, very specialized and very controlled realm of reality, just fit enough to weave a certain kind of reality around us that we later called 'phenomena'. If the hearing range of our ears were quite different, and if we could hear even the ultrasonic range of audio signals too, our reality of world would have been unimaginably different ! Similar is the case of eyes too; if we could see every micro-organism in our environment, our lives won't have been same as of now ! Similar is the case with our other sense organs like nose, tongue and skin. It is obvious that what we see, hear and smell are not the absolute whole of reality, but a predestined, predetermined, and pre-designed realm of it, perhaps specially meant to give us a particular realm of reality !
We can not discard the presence of a similar, specially chosen inherent faculty that used to provide us with the sense of 'unity' and 'order' between what we see and hear too; the faculty of intellect, understanding or reason. If what the external sense organs provide us is specially chosen range of reality, how could the 'orderly' relation or 'unity' sensing faculty between what we see and hear could be different and absolute in any respect ? Without doubt, the kind of 'order' or unity or 'consistency that we are equipped to 'sense' between the data that our external sense organs provide should also be a pre-chosen, pre-designed and pre-determined kind !
When a snake bit a man in the primeval jungle and its subsequent consequences, those in the then community had made a certain theory of probability about snake bites. His inherent 'sense of making sensible relation' with a currently observed event with every such possible incident in future was the crude beginning of future sciences. To argue that it was my eye that saw, and my ear that heard, and it was my intellectual ability that made sensible relations between what I have observed could be only a narrow and self-chosen way of looking at the world and judging it. Such ways of looking at the world doesn't make 'sense', if judged using our one and only and final faculty of deciding sense and nonsense about what we do and observe.
Accepting the existence of such inherent 'sense' making faculty within us only will make 'sense'. When looking at all our knowledge storage from the above seen angle, we will realize that we owe everything to our own inherent sources and faculties and not to our special intellectual prowess. Of course man has been bestowed with exceedingly better degree, or better quality such faculties than the members of other animal species, and it made us exceedingly different and superior to them.
The attempt of this small note was NOT to belittle man's intellectual achievements. This was aimed at making him more humble and realistic about what is really his own, and what belong to nature.What we have discussed above poses a serious question; as to how 'free' is man's free-will ?
Share our blogs that explain the above referred special features of our faculty of reason at links: http://thesparkleofhumanreason.blogspot.in/
http://philosopherskorner.blogspot.in/
http://thewhyquestionofexistenceanswered.blogspot.in/
Authored by :
Abraham Joseph
www.conscienceofthesociety.com : a philosophic non-profit organization that do freelance research into reason, mind and self.
contact us at : ajoseph1@rediffmail.com
conscienceofthesociety@hotmail.com
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