starfire
Nov 1, 2010
Undergraduate / Brown "Everything that I do not know" essay response [4]
I would really appreciate if someone would give me some really deep and creative feedback on the topic and content of my essay. Grammatical corrections are welcomed as well!
What don't I know is everything.
For a huge part of my life I had a different worldview. I thought that I knew a lot, and that the little I did not know, I could learn easily. Today I could write a nametag that said "naïve" right on my chest.
During the refreshing spring of my Junior year, I decided to take a college Physics class. I had studied Biology, Chemistry, and Mathematics before, how hard could a little Physics be? Besides that fact that the room was actually air-conditioned, I was in for a big surprise.
Physics undermined my entire perception of the real world. I thought I understood how to walk, or how to put a book down, yet here I was learning about normal force and inertia. Simple everyday tasks that I had congratulated myself for being able to accomplish, crumbled like stones in my mind. Even though I found the concepts destructive at first, I learned to see the knowledge as humbling.
If I do not understand the basic motion of a pendulum, how can I say that I really know a plethora of topics? I decided that I needed to reevaluate what I did and did not know. I ended up studying some ancient philosophers to find a basis on what I do and do not understand.
I now follow Rene Descartes philosophical reasoning. Doubt everything. By doubting everything, I cannot know anything. The only thing I can know is myself. Because I can think of myself thinking, I am real.
Because I know that I am real, I can only "know thy self." By knowing myself and practicing theory and practice, I can strip away the fickle assumptions of my old way of thinking and uncover the tangible truth. This is why today I can comfortably write a nametag that says "enlightened."
I would really appreciate if someone would give me some really deep and creative feedback on the topic and content of my essay. Grammatical corrections are welcomed as well!
What don't I know is everything.
For a huge part of my life I had a different worldview. I thought that I knew a lot, and that the little I did not know, I could learn easily. Today I could write a nametag that said "naïve" right on my chest.
During the refreshing spring of my Junior year, I decided to take a college Physics class. I had studied Biology, Chemistry, and Mathematics before, how hard could a little Physics be? Besides that fact that the room was actually air-conditioned, I was in for a big surprise.
Physics undermined my entire perception of the real world. I thought I understood how to walk, or how to put a book down, yet here I was learning about normal force and inertia. Simple everyday tasks that I had congratulated myself for being able to accomplish, crumbled like stones in my mind. Even though I found the concepts destructive at first, I learned to see the knowledge as humbling.
If I do not understand the basic motion of a pendulum, how can I say that I really know a plethora of topics? I decided that I needed to reevaluate what I did and did not know. I ended up studying some ancient philosophers to find a basis on what I do and do not understand.
I now follow Rene Descartes philosophical reasoning. Doubt everything. By doubting everything, I cannot know anything. The only thing I can know is myself. Because I can think of myself thinking, I am real.
Because I know that I am real, I can only "know thy self." By knowing myself and practicing theory and practice, I can strip away the fickle assumptions of my old way of thinking and uncover the tangible truth. This is why today I can comfortably write a nametag that says "enlightened."