Sense perception

Some quotes for your consideration!
There's more to seeing that meets the eye." (K. T. Cole)
"There is no truth. There is only perception." (Gustave Flaubert)
"Everyone hears only what he understands." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
"True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception."(Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy)
"We hear and apprehend only what we already half know." (Henry David Thoreau)
"Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic." (Edward de Bono)
"We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see." (Henry David Thoreau)
"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." (Aldous Huxley)
"We sometimes get all the information, but we refuse to get the message." (Cullen Hightower)
"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comrehend." (Henri Bergson)
"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is -- infinite." (William Blake)
"It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive." (C. W. Leadbeater)
"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings." (Richard Dawkins)
"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." (Camille Pissarro)
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." (Hans Margolius)
"Science is nothing but perception." (Plato)

What sorts of knowledge and or truths does this subject convey

The subject that I have chosen is Economics.

Economics is also known as a social science, this subject tries to study human behaviour during changes in various factors in relation to how resources are best used. As the concept of economics is far too complex models are created to simplify things.

It is with these models that economists use to test human and economic responses when a variable (such as the supply of rice) would change (with all other things being the same). However, the real world works in a much more complex way. By trying to represent the world with a simplified model, we would only have a glimpse of the inner workings of our economies. As a result of us using models to learn about economics, how can we be sure that the knowledge provided to us are true?

Then theres the prediction of human behaviour, economists assume that people will make rational decisions and go for the best choices available to them while entreprenures will choose to produce goods for maximum profits. However, we have seen many times in history when people have made the wrong decisions and have caused castrophic problems. Assumptions are also involved in economics, for all we know these assumptions could be wrong. This reliance on something so abstract and unverifyable leaves us wondering whether we'll ever grasp the truth of economics.

With different people seeing and observing the world in different ways (which is shaped by their experiences and their tinted glasses) different opinions and theories are presented. The conclusions reached can sometimes contradict one another. I would think that the truth and knowledge for this subject would only be perfectly correct for the person who thought it up, this is because people perceive the world differently and they have different values and opinions.

Pick a subject; What sorts of knowledge and or truths does this subject convey

For this area of discussion, i have chosen the subject; History

Practically since the dawn of time, mankind has been trying to document experiences whether through carvings on a cave wall, or by passing via word of mouth. History transcends culture and time and is a thoroughly "enriching" subject.

However, how much of this history is believable? Such is the cruelty of mother nature that all humans will inevitably die. This means events witnessed or experienced by individuals cannot be recounted to a perfect degree of accuracy. Yes some may argue there are videos and photographs but these offer limited dimensions from only one perspective. But then undoubtedly, there would be another set of people that experience the same event. As a result, what we now have will be several, subtly different accounts leading to an argument as to what really happened.

Now here is what i think a problem when it comes to the subject of history. Historical accounts you read from a textbook or see from a video will only give you a one-dimensional, slightly warped perspective of the event. This is by no means a wrong perspective, but just the experiences of someone with a different way of re-telling or recreating an occurence. The next generation of historians will take these already slightly altered accounts and distort them a little more, for not wanting to be accused of plagiarism. The cycle then repeats with more people reading this, by now, relatively inaccurate re-telling and alter it a bit more.

So, if technology somehow allows us in the future to go back and revisit an event when it actually happen; i'm afraid History will always be fraught with a degree of inaccuracy.

Vark link.

Here is the vark link for Monday:
www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=younger

Knowers & Knowing

1. 'Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to recognise that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to recognise that you do not know it. That is knowledge.' (Confucius)
2. 'Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.' (Leonardo da Vinci)
3. 'Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.' (Martin Luther King)
4. 'Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.' (Francois de La Rochefoucald)
5. 'Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.' (Daniel J. Boorstin)
6. 'It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.' (G. K. Chesterton)
7. 'Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.' (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.)
8. 'A very popular error – having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions.' (Anon)
9. 'There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.' (Democritus)
10. 'The most important truths are likely to be those which… society at that time least wants to hear.' (W. H. Auden)
11. 'Never assume the obvious is true.' (William Safire)
12. 'The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.' (Ludwig von Mises)
13. 'The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.' (Anais Nin)
14. 'If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.' (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
15. 'Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.' (Buckminster Fuller)
16. 'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.' (Carl Jung)
17. 'The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.' (Eden Phillpotts)
18. 'The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.' (Malcolm Forbes)
19. 'Self-knowledge is like a garden. If it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.' (Ghanaian proverb)
20. 'In times of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future: the learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.' (Eric Hoffer)
21. 'The more you know the less you understand.' (Tao Le Ching)