Robert Win: Knowers and Knowing

One of the quotations which stands out to me is "There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom." (Democritus). Democritus states that knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing and are two different things, which contrasts with what many people consider as wise, today and often think the two are somehow the same thing.

The 3 key words within the quote are "many", "know" and "wisdom". The main message of the quote is (as i mentioned above), knowing many things does not make one wise. It also suggests that there are many people who know many things, but if knowing many things made one wise, there would be many wise people, and what Democritus is trying to say is that there are not and may never be many wise people in the world.

I agree with Democritus' statement, that knowledge is not wisdom and that there are not many wise people in the world. I believe that knowledge is something one learns, finds out, or is told by another person. This makes it information which is not discovered or experienced directly by ones self. Wisdom on the other hand, is information one discovers purely by themselves, or by doing and finding out something, with no influence from others, or if one were to challenge what one has been taught since birthand what others say and believe is correct, making it very difficult for one to be truly 'wise'.

During the 1st TOK lesson we had, we watched a clip about the different possible maps that the US public schools could adopt, in the TV series 'The West Wing'. These maps of the world were all different, and showed the sizes, shapes and locations of countries and the world differently. The creators of each map, one could say, were 'wise', as they came up with their own view of what the world actually looks like. Although they may have based their view on information provided by others, they have shown wisdom by unaccepting what others have taught them about what the world looks like. One map which showed the Southern hemisphere on top, and the Northern hemisphere at the bottom, sparked a discussion between the characters in the video about which hemisphere should be at the top of the map. One of the characters mentioned that the map was "wrong" as the top of the world (in her view) is north and has always been north. However, her opinion of the map suggests that she has only considered what is correct from what she has been taught since childhood, thus she accepts that North is 'at the top' and rules out any other ideas which may show that what she has been taught is not quite correct.

This character demonstrates knowledge, which is a contrasts to the the creator of the 'upside down map' who shows wisdom as he/she (the map creator) would have also been brought up and taught that North is at the top, but has created his/her own theory and view of what the world map should look like, showing that he/she has challenged what he/she has been taught, and what others think is correct.