What are some of the practical applications of different kinds of knowledge, you ask? Well, we need knowledge to do anything, and when I mean anything, I mean anything. Take breathing for example, we know how to breath, because we learned it when we were born, and we have the knowledge of breathing. Now we breathe all the time. Same with walking, eating, and seeing. We learned these things to survive, I would count that as practical, wouldn’t you? Newman and Plato both agree that knowledge is important, but they have different applications for it.
I think Newman doesn’t want us to learn just to be popular at the Sunday morning book club meetings, but just because we can. In Plato’s allusion we need to find knowledge for ourselves, to become enlightened, or to overcome a task; such as leaving a “cave”. We all learn things, but we need the “want to learn” instead of the “It’s cool to learn” is what I believe the message is here.
No Comments Yet
No comments yet.
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
