Essay On Shared Knowledge

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Mao Zedong says; “if you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience” (Zedong) .This quote suggests that the real fundamentals of personal knowledge are influenced by direct individual observations, habits experiments and imagination. It ignores the very fact that shared knowledge plays a very important role in shaping personal knowledge. Now in order to explore the knowledge question I will start off by explaining the key words. Shared knowledge refers to the knowledge that has been gathered by specific groups. This could be a group of people in the same profession,…show more content…
The claim is that shared knowledge can shape personal knowledge provided that the information is well understood and is easily accessible to individual people. In my chemistry class not so long ago were looking at how different scientists came up with different theories in Acids and Bases. To start with, in the Pearson Baccalaureate IB Diploma Chemistry Higher Level (Brown and Ford) text book Bronsted, Lowry, Arrhenius and Lewis made great contributions with their different findings about the theories that surround Acids and Bases. These three scientists have provided the very elementary basis of the topic of acids and bases by sharing their different findings. This then constitute as shared knowledge. Now before my IB diploma I had the shakiest knowledge of acids, I had always thought of acids as substances that had a sour or even bitter taste and was all. However, the shared knowledge that has been provided by the four scientists has had a very big influence on my own personal knowledge as I am now able to describe acid in terms of hydrogen ion concentration, proton donating and even electron pair accepting. This then shows that indeed if shared knowledge in formal education is well understood and received, can influence personal
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