Knowledge (by google) is facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, but it could also mean awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. I believe the second meaning of knowledge really explains what knowledge is. I believe knowledge is experience, it might be true or it might to completely false which contradicts the famous quote “knowledge is key”. Yes I believe knowledge is key but not all knowledge is useful and not all knowledge is facts.

Knowledge is an experience that could either be true or false and knowledge could also be facts in some occasions whereas a belief is a vast amount of the same opinions joined to make a community. It is also similar to knowledge because it could be true or it could be false but it is NEVER a fact and an opinion is an emotion or passion on a subject that is expressed to the open world. Opinion are what we base our reality on in my opinion (exactly “my opinion”) because no one has true facts on human existence, it’s more of a gigantic amount of opinions that have been justified by others.

What could really boost up a claim or opinion about a subject is an agreed amount of evidence from every single angle, perspective and scenario to completely justify a claim. After continuous amount of testing and evidence we can evidently call this a fact.

I believe that some knowledge could or bad in some situations, for example knowing knowledge on celebrities and their lives would not be useful in a science class but it could be useful in normal social events and I wouldn’t say some information is more useful than others because knowledge really shines in different scenarios even thought most knowledge isn’t true, it could still be useful

This photo was taken at my mother’s wedding on the 1st of June.
This is her third marriage.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, knowledge is the understanding of or information about a subject you get from experience or study, either known by one person or by people generally.
Belief describes the feeling of being certain that something exists or is true. Lastly, the word opinion is a thought or belief about something or someone

In my opinion, I believe that knowledge is everything. From listening to something on the radio to a friend telling you a story no matter the situation, you gain information, beliefs and opinions from those experiences.

Noting back to this photograph, according to the Christian Religion, once you marry someone, you are to “Love and cherish them for all eternity until death does us part”.
However, my dad is definitely not dead.

I know that my mom is happier in this marriage; I believe that my parents couldn’t have worked out, and in my opinion, I’m certain that remarrying is not a bad thing.
I believe that although each of these words has different meanings, they all come together to form one viewpoint and personality. If someone lacks one, they won’t have completed their full potential.
So if they are all connected, how can we distinguish the differences between each word?
Knowledge is everything. This includes opinion and belief, but these two words can be distinguished. This is because opinion has a reason behind it, while belief is true to you and not based on opinions or facts.
For example, in religion, you believe something is true without further facts. This could be the reason why many people go by the fact of only marrying once, even if it means you’re not happy within that relationship. They are willing to sacrifice happiness for what they believe in.

In conclusion, knowledge is an umbrella term for everything you think, believe and have an opinion on.
Even the dictionary mentions the word belief while describing what an opinion is.

Knowledge is defined as “facts, information and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.” Or “awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.” In simpler terms, when we think of the knowledge in our heads, it’s really something we’ve been told and believed it to be true or something we’ve learnt from doing something. The knowledge we obtain through teaching and learning isn’t information we have perceived directly. We consider what we have been taught knowledge in the basis of two major factors- evidence and trust. Trust is defined as a “firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.” Evidence is “the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.” In Science- for example- for a new theory to come into affect, the information has to be tested and supported. This evidence verifies and consolidates this information to be “knowledge.” Without it, it doesn’t have a leg to stand on and (generally) becomes unreliable. This is where trust comes into play. Despite numbers and statistics as evidence, this so called knowledge we learn and acquire isn’t something we find upfront; it’s discovered by other individuals. This new information is then relayed down different channels of people before it reaches the point where you come across it. We hear it and are told it’s true; therefore, we subconsciously classify it as such. Can words not get lost in translation? Do different people not interpret different things differently? This shouldn’t affect us because we’ve already considered it as new knowledge. In a nutshell, knowledge isn’t limited given that trust isn’t limited. It takes many forms and many ways of getting to a certain point. This certain point isn’t the same for everyone; therefore, what’s considered knowledge isn’t the same for everyone.

Knowledge is acquired by the knower. This makes knowledge subjective as each individual will accept or reject knowledge in multiple different ways due to their different perspectives. This makes defining what counts as knowledge an incredibly difficult task.  

In this exhibition, I have used and highlighted the image of onion cells under a light microscope of x100 magnification. This image was taken from my IB biology class while we were examining cells. In today’s science, this image is presented as a form of knowledge because scientists (the knowers) have found this out and accepted (acquired) it. From their perspective, it’s true that onions are made of cells and that these cells look like the image above. However, scientists before the cell theory believed in the spontaneous generation theory (the idea that living organisms came to life out of non-living matter). This theory clashes with the cell theory therefore this image may not have been enough to be counted as knowledge for those scientists as it goes against their truth. This emphasizes the idea that knowledge (and what counts as knowledge) is subjective and depends on the individual’s values and whether the knowledge is true to them.  

This implies that anything could be knowledge even if it’s not true to an individual because it could be true to another individual. However, could false knowledge count as knowledge? For example, a lie could be counted as knowledge because the person who believes in the lie thinks it’s true therefore it’s knowledge to them. However, the person who told the lie knows it’s not true so they will have a different view on the situation. Perspectives could also change. For example, the person might find out their knowledge was false, causing them to reject the lie. This might make them stop counting the lie as knowledge as it no longer corresponds to the truth. A knower could also reject knowledge even if it still counts it as knowledge. For example, the person who was lied to finds out the truth but refuses to accept it as the truth. This could be the person rejecting the knowledge even though it very likely counts as knowledge.  

Overall, knowledge could be true, false and rejected and there are numerous ways to count knowledge. It could be just about anything.  

I think we can distinguish between knowledge, belief and opinion by using scientific methods in order to establish evidence and find out what’s a fact. The definition of fact is “a thing that is known or proved to be true.” and in order to prove its truthfulness objective evidence is needed, which can be obtained through science. For example, it has been acknowledged that the sky is blue, that is a fact. We know this is a fact because it has been scientifically proven blue light is scattered in all directions of the Earth’s atmosphere and is scattered more than any other colour light as it travels in shorter, smaller waves. However, blue-purple colour blind people see the sky as purple. To them, this may be considered a fact, but it is rather an opinion. What makes this an opinion is that the statement “the sky is purple” is true to them, because that’s what they see and therefore think , but it has not been scientifically proven. On the contrary, it has been scientifically proven that this person is colour blind, which is a fact, so although they may think the sky is purple, there is no proof, as their “proof” relies on the fact they’re colour blind and get blue and purple mixed up.

On the other hand, belief is not based on what you know or think, it is purely based on what you have faith in. It may be an acceptance that something is true, however, there is no evidence or proof confirming this which leaves it to be a belief rather than knowledge. For example, some may believe heaven is above us or in the sky, hence the phrase “they’re looking down on us” when referring to a passed love one. Nonetheless, there is no evidence that heaven is above us, as we cannot see it or prove it to be true using science; we are completely unaware of what happens to us when we die. Because there is no evidence it cannot be knowledge, but it isn’t opinion because it’s not something you think and that is specifically your take on something, it is belief as you have faith in it rather than assuming it is a straight fact.

So hypothetically, let’s say you’ve just had a bad cut on your knee after falling over during a walk. In this situation, would it be useful if I told you ‘Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815’? No. It would be more useful for me to tell you that I had plasters or dressing.

What I’m trying to say here is that knowledge is useful all-around, it is the context that specifies how useful that knowledge is, in another situation you could be taking a history paper with a napoleon question and the example of waterloo I gave earlier would be more useful then.

This can be applied universally, and even clickbait articles like ’12 facts that are completely useless’, can in some contexts have equal use as knowledge as any other. Even stories that are distorted, such as the Sun newspaper’s reporting on the Hillsborough disaster, can have use as knowledge.

In brief, a football stadium in Hillsborough was overcrowded and people were crushed as the game went on; trying to escape, people jumped over the barriers onto the pitch where the police overlooking to game beat them with their batons thinking the intention was malicious.

The Sun newspaper reported that it was entirely the football fans from Liverpool’s fault, and that they were ‘football hooligans’. This resulted in the Sun being frowned upon in the city, and the Sun newspaper even lost a few legal battles over the controversy. The knowledge of the distorted facts from the Sun’s reporting can be useful as it shows how Media can manipulate and audience, and it’s effect on whole communities of people.

In conclusion, this all shows that all knowledge can be useful no matter what, and it all depends on the context when it comes to what knowledge is more useful than the last.

This is a tweet composed by Donald Trump, in which he claims that climate change is not real. 

Finding a definition for the word “knowledge” is rather easy. According to the Oxford Dictionary, knowledge is “the information, understanding and skills that you gain through education or experience”. Defining what counts as knowledge, on the other hand, is trickier. 

In this tweet, Donald Trump states that climate change is not real, which is factually incorrect. Factual knowledge is the knowledge that can be evidenced by fact. Trump’s tweet is not factual as it is not based on evidence.  

Another question we have to ask in order to answer the main question is “does knowledge have to be factual?”. In my opinion, the answer to this question is no. Faith, for instance, is one of many other ways of knowing, that is not based on anything really except your own belief. Believing in God, for example, is not something everybody does. But for a person, who believes in God, God exists. And though this cannot be evidenced, it is a “fact” for the person, who believes that God is real. 

So, does Trump’s tweet count as knowledge? Yes, it does. This is because knowledge is information you gain through education. Making him think the way he thinks is probably because this is what he was taught. Furthermore, as explained above, knowledge does not have to be factual. Knowledge is rather a person’s own “fact”. 

In conclusion, Donald Trump’s tweet is knowledge and so is every other opinion, belief, fact and truth, etc. This is because there is always a reason for a person to think, what they think. This could be their education or their experiences. However, even though almost everything counts as knowledge, a knowledge that is not factual can potentially cause damage e.g., Donald Trump’s tweet about climate change not being real.  

I believe, knowledge is someone’s own truth or “fact” and is very much based on opinion as well as experiences. Moreover, there is no wrong knowledge as, considering the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of knowledge, which is “the information, understanding and skills that you gain through education or experience”, knowledge is simply what you personally experienced and therefore, everything you know is knowledge.