A conversation about stars, imagination and the status quo
Nyadol:
Conventional knowledge is the enemy of imagination. It limits out ability to think beyond the ‘status quo‘.
Nyabana (Bern):
I do believe though that we are in a knowledge age where it is widely accepted and expected that improvements be made on current C.K. I think we can tell from the number of PhD candidates graduating from many institutions each semester.
Challenging and coming up with a completely opposite point of view to that of C.K ( ie stars don’t exist when we can clearly see them) however, might be a different ball game all together, but still if one can justify the basis of their argument. I don’t believe there would be anybody at such level to dismiss another’s “ability to think beyond
the ‘status quo‘“ just by citing C.K as the only reason to not be ‘imaginative’.
Therefore C.K is only ‘conventional’ until such time that new information becomes available, in other words, nothing is conventional for long in this day and age my dear. Imagine away and “status quo” yourself out anytime you like.
Nyadol:
Hello dear, very clever argument, and very right in its own rights.
However it is debatable whether PHD candidates come up with completely different point of views from C.K (thanks for the abbreviation). The
methodologies and the academic’s guidance make us work within the rules of academic writing and concepts. If you were to go too far,
most likely than not you might not get published. I think that’s the role of the supervisor. However that is not my point, because we are limited to work with what we know and understand and have available.
Most inventions are a ‘ re-arrangement’ of readily available material, whether in nature or manmade.
I have no problem with the statement you make. Because it can be both true and untrue, depending on what we are talking about. What I meant
was not to dismiss anyone’s ability to think beyond the status quo…. that why I used the phrase “limits our ability”. First I do not have
the ground to challenge anyone’s knowledge. Also I am a strong believer in constructivist theory; I believe there are no absolute truths but what exist are variations of the truth. And as long as my
variation of truth does not harm you or your concepts of self, life and general then we are fine. My favorite quote, by the way, is by Socrates which says, “all I know is that I know nothing”.
Imagination is important – this is my main point. You can argue that all that is C.K now began as imagination or an observation that was different from the original C.K. For example C.K was once that the earth was the center of universe until Galileo challenged this by stating the sun is the centre of the universe, which is now C.K. My
assumption is if we lack imagination, we lack the ability to think of something new. But if we imagine there could be something out there that is different, we are compelled to look into it.
PS. The example, ‘stars do not exist when we can’t clearly see them” I
wish to differ.
Stars that we do not know exist or can’t see clearly… do exist. What does not exist however is our knowledge of their existence or our ability to see the star. This does not change the fact that they
exist, in fact they would continue to exist whether we have knowledge of them or not, whether we can see them clearly or not.
