The Dynamics of Knowledge

Why is Science Always Changing?

Consider knowledge, which includes any particular science you have in mind such as physics or medicine. In the diagram, note the center ring is all the knowledge you have, as in know. The next ring out contains all the knowledge (e.g. science) you don’t know. The outer ring includes all the knowledge you not only don’t know but don’t know you don’t know. Inside the small center ring is included a smaller ring of all those things you may believe you know, but know incorrectly.

Each of these containers changes with time. As you learn more, the enter ring enlarges, possibly because you have concluded more knowledge or have solved one the your known unknowns. That is, you solved a problem. Also, over time, you may have discovered something you believed to be correct was not correct after all. You now may know what is correct, or it has become a new known unknown. Both of these happen all the time, us personally, for every science, and all sciences or knowledge lumped together.

That outer ring needs some explanation. These unknown unknowns are gradually revealed to us as we have resolved some or many of the known unknowns. For example, we were unaware of the quantum world until many conflicts in classical physics were revealed, solving some problems and revealing the quantum world with its own very unlimited source of new unknowns (problems). But just how many of these unknown unknowns cannot be known, in fact, can never be known. To amplify this, we don’t have any idea if we will ever have complete knowledge, or even whether, for example, this is beyond our evolutionary state.

I hope that in answering this question in a very generalized way, it is apparent all knowledge is dynamic, and there can be no such thing as a closed body of knowledge – ever.

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