Epistemology - interesting post from Farhan

Epistemology- Karl Popper  

The blog on Karl Popper’s perspective of epistemology describes a very interesting theory of three Worlds each with different contents but they are strongly linked to each other. These interdependent  worlds together form the solar system of knowledge.        

If a boy let’s say is walking knowledge thirsty in an indoors zoo, he steps up to the fishes in the tank  and merely touches them he feel the slippery surface of the fishes body, then he moves on to the baby panda and hugs it and plays with it for a long time and shares a pleasant experience. The boy then confronts a girl of the same age as his and eagerly interacts with her and spends a lot of time with her in the zoo, after that is done the huge majestic doors of the Zoo’s library catches his attention and as he enters he is awed by a heaps and heaps of books waiting to be read. He then learns more about the animals in the zoo he met through the books and pictures and some videos from the library’s computer. Later his zoo trip comes to an end when his parents pick him up expecting their son to have perceived enough knowledge for a 10 year old.       

So accordingly most of us reading the above short story will entitle the story as e.g. “A 10 year old’s Zoo experience” or  “Trip to the Zoo”, but Mr.Popper will entitle “Entering into the Three Worlds of Knowledge”. Mr. Popper has already understood that the young boy has been travelling from one world to another throughout the story, the boy when he felt the slippery skin surface of the fishes in the water and the softness of the fur of the panda these physical sensations are registered into World 1. This world consists of the reality and the knowledge gained physically, it consists of what is actually there in front of us but not that which we have pictured about it. The boy thinks that the fishes are fun to touch and the panda is very huggable, playful and completely harmless even though in reality news of attacks of wild pandas are not non-existing (World 1 has just been linked with World 2). The boy also has fun with the girl he met as talks to her and creates his own superficial opinion about her despite who he really is. These pleasantly experience of animal touching, boy’s thoughts of the animals and the girl all are registered in World 2. This world has all the things that we are have understood from the reality and the memories fun or boring that we have experienced. The boy when he finally enters the library and starts to scroll through the books he actually has landed on World 3 where the knowledge of the zoo animals are all printed in books or are saved in the computer as pictures or video files, these consist of all the observations by professionals of World 1. 

We now can definitely connect the three Worlds where World 2 is a human interpreted World of World 1 and all the evidences of World 2 are safe in World 3. 


Farhan Hasan