To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.
-- Socrates
The world around us is constantly changing. The universe is far from static, so why should knowledge be? As our lives and surroundings change, so do our thoughts and ideas. What is considered a hard fact in one generation is likely to be discarded and ridiculed by the next, just as we question and leave behind the wonderful and impossible beliefs we held as young children. For example, in the dead of night, I used to hear tapping and scratching above my bed. Upon hearing this for the first time, I came to the logical conclusion any five-year-old would -- ghosts. I didn't have a reason to believe there weren't ghosts in the attic, and I constantly tried to convince my parents of the paranormal activities in the house with this fallacy. After about a week of pestering them, I found that I was wrong. It was mice. After the problem was taken care of, the noises subsided, and all thoughts of ghosts left my mind.
Now that I am older, I've learned the value of justification, and I try to base my knowledge on facts and evidence. I accept scientific findings and what I read in textbooks to be true, as long as there is substantial evidence supporting them. I, like many of my classmates, am content with accepting the discoveries and knowledge of experts as true. Because I do not have the tools or the background information to make a scientific discovery of my own, I must rely on the work of others. However, it can prove useful to be skeptical of experts' knowledge. Without curiosity and skepticism, we would not progress. I try to place the knowledge that I gain from textbooks on the belief-knowledge continuum. While it is extremely difficult to know something for certain, it can be viewed as beyond reasonable doubt, or probable. Striving for more knowledge into justifying a particular subject area, or even proving the subject to be true knowledge, will allow us to continue to pursue knowledge and progress.
