Knowing

Paper Written by Gloria Wood as a student at Hamline University in 1971 for Epistemology Class


Knowledge! The very word has become an enigma to me. When in a fighting spirit, I wrestle with it, hammer away at it, give it every ounce of energy – demanding answers. When disappointed and defeated, I lapse helplessly into idle speculation, drifting aimlessly from one glimmer of truth to the next, seeking answers. But whatever that monstrous, unfathomable word demands – I do not have it to give – cannot give it. I do not have the answer! It means too much perhaps, the word has become so filled with meaning it is now everything and nothing. Has it gone past or beyond all meanings into the incomprehensible!
But you say, “look here...” and you may demonstrate your logic and your proofs – you may show me empirically, you may tap the mighty forces of intuition but the vastness of what is demanded in the name of knowledge is too immense, too great – it is mind-shattering! In our humanness we scurry to security and seek to protect ourselves from the blast of “not-knowing”! And cloaked in the various systems and theories of knowledge, we have fashioned and invented to cover our nakedness – we somehow survive. But if we are honest, perhaps in rare moments, we see through, above and beyond all of mans” so-called theories of knowledge and experience the terror and agony of absolute “not-knowing”.