engleski

In the knowledge-based Society there are more and more ignorant persons

Humanity has always lived and will always live in an age of top knowledge and high technology. Therefore, the syntagm “ knowledge-based society” is a very simplified slogan, suitable for commercial messages to an increasing number of ignorant people. Neither does the emphasising that after the information society the humanity will live in a knowledge-based society, explain what this means. Because it is just as possible to claim with full justification that the lives in the next period will be lived in the knowledge-based society, but also in the time of interweaving artificial or human technologies: biotechnology (technology of the living) and technology of things (technology of the non-living). Starting from the cybernetic laws, all the phenomena of the world can be presented as information, matter or energy. Information is the characteristic of the spirit, and so is the knowledge. In technical systems made by human being, by means of command (information), the substance (form of matter) and the energy are transformed into the products of material human culture. It would be worth knowing what the homo habilis had known at the moment when 2.5 million years ago he made a stone edge, one of the greatest turning points in the development of humanity. It is namely with the manufacturing of stone edge that the material human culture started, as well as the production of macro-geometrical parts, mechanics of fracture and thus the physics and natural science. Summarising, the human culture as the whole started with the manufacturing of the stone edge. The knowledge and the manufacture have always developed side by side and always at that particular time they represented the latest advancements of the humankind. And this is precisely how it will be in the very far future as well. Until the appearance of some other culture, e.g. the one of androids. What the syntagm knowledge-based society wants to emphasise is the method of acquiring new knowledge. During the prevailing period of the development of humanity, the newly created knowledge was the result of experience acquired by the method of trial and error. Over the last several thousand years, new knowledge started to be created as the result of thinking and later of research as well. The contribution of the Greek philosophers is here invaluable. They created the basis for the development of natural sciences. Although everything started with technology, or more precisely with particle separation machining processes, technical sciences were constituted relatively late, in the second half of the 19th century. In the mid-20th century there appeared a new, crucial turning point. New knowledge is less and less a result of a method based on trials and corrected failures. It is primarily the result of research. Therefore, the syntagm about the knowledge-based society speaks precisely about the Society based on research reached knowledge. This syntagm correctly describes further development of humanity at the level of information technology. At the same time, the living and the non-living are getting more and more connected. An example of this is the cybernisation of men – replacing of the original parts of the human body by those made of artificial materials such as metals, polymers or ceramics. The development of material culture thus described is based almost exclusively on the results of research. However, the increasingly comprehensive knowledge brings the individual into a paradox situation. The individual knows more and more, but is less and less acquainted with the overall human knowledge, thus being turned into an ignorant person. This often results in arrogance, lack of tolerance and similar forms of behaviour. This requires new knowledge syntheses. It will be shown how a powerful scientific method, systemic theory, makes it possible to develop such syntheses on an example of injection moulding of substances.

knowledge; society; systemic theory

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