Introduction

Abstract

The ideal seeker of knowledge in Western philosophy, at least since Locke, is a lonely figure. He does his job single-handed, finding out facts about his environment by direct observation, deducing, generalizing, and explaining on the basis of principles of inference which he has himself enunciated using his own ‘natural lights’. However handy and plausible a bit of personally unchecked information might be, he would never take anyone else’s word for it. Language does contribute to his knowledge-gathering enterprise, but only by facilitating the filing system, as a medium of preserving and processing, rather than procuring, data.

“Do you know that the earth existed then?” — “Of course I know that. I have it from someone who certainly knows all about it.”

“And it isn’t, for example, just my experience, but other people’s that I get knowledge from. Now one might say that it is experience again that leads us to give credence to others. But what experience makes me believe that the anatomy and physiology books don’t contain what is false?”

“What kind of grounds have I for trusting text-books of experimental physics? I have no grounds for not trusting them ...”

— Wittgenstein (On Certainty, 187, 275,600)

“Do not believe in traditions merely because they have been handed down for many generations and in many places; do not believe in anything because it is rumoured and spoken of by many; do not believe because the written statement of some old sage is produced .... After observation and analysis when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all then accept and live up to it ...”

— The Buddha (Kalamasutta, Anguttara Nikaya)