What Is Knowledge Essay

Intuition is the hunch to turn left at a crossroads when you’re lost or the gut feeling that you should choose the third queue in the supermarket because you “feel” that it’s the best one. There are those who argue that intuition is in fact not a feeling and but a reasonable and logical choice that your subconscious makes for you. For example when a fireman is inside a burning building and has two seconds to decide if he should turn right or left.

He thinks that it’s his intuition telling him to go left when it could be argued that his subconscious has made a logical calculation of his surroundings and decided that it’s safest to go left.

It could also be argued that intuition is an instinct. If attacked by a bear, your intuition and instinct become the same; both telling you to get away as soon as possible. This is also a decision and action based on reason.

Reason tells you that if you that the bear is bigger, more lethal than you and possibly dangerous and so logically it would be better if you left. But then again the fear that you experience when seeing a bear is an emotion and fear usually makes you want to get away. So is intuition based on reason or emotion? Intuition is used in the different areas of knowledge.

For example mathematics is an area of knowledge where logic and reason are frequently used. Laws of physics and mathematics, like Newton’s three laws and law of exponents, are generally accepted and believed to be true as they have yet to be disproved.

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They have complex formulas and equations as proof to back up the laws. As most of the world’s population is not very well trained and educated in mathematics and physics we believe in our authorities. In all the mathematicians and physicists who claim that these universally accepted laws are correct.

Thus by calculating something we use faith (in our authorities) and the logic that we have been taught in math class to solve a mathematical/physical problem. Thus it would seem that there is no place for intuition in the area of mathematics and natural sciences (in this case physics). However, many of the students in Higher Level Mathematics claim that they often use intuition to help solve difficult problems. That they make a guess because “it feels right” and hope that it will lead to a correct answer. Sometimes this hunch works, most often not.

But a wrong answer is not a necessary failure. You always need to start somewhere and that’s where intuition helps. It becomes the hypothesis and if incorrect you learn that this was not the way to solve the problem. Now you have one choice less and are one step closer to the correct answer. Some might say that as mathematics is seen as an area of knowledge where reason and logic often rule then arts could be seen as an area of knowledge where reason and logic isn’t used as often and perception senses and emotion rule instead. Art is very personal and quite often requires a lot of imagination.

It is also creative and a way to express oneself. Because of this art is emotional, it creates emotional reactions by viewers/listeners/readers and shows the feelings and personality of the artist himself. The artist often writes for example a poem about how the artist feels. Every poem is new and different and so the artist always has to start from scratch which requires intuition. You have to start somewhere and intuition helps to find the right way to go. Intuition in art is also when walking down a street and a melody starts forming in your head or the words to a poem.

That is why people who write or compose a lot usually carry with them a small notebook so they can write down all the brilliant ideas that they suddenly come up with. Does art always require intuition and is art always emotional? When painting a portrait of someone or scenery the artist has a model that needs to be copied. This doesn’t require imagination nor creativity as there is nothing to be invented or made up from scratch because there already is a correct answer, a model to follow. This then makes art reasonable and logical as all that is required of the artist is talent and technique to know how to copy something successfully.

Therefore in some cases art does indeed lack intuition and emotion. This also applies when making decisions based on experience. For example if a song producer wants to add some extra flavour to his latest rap-song he knows that a few more yeahs! or increasing the base will do the trick then his decision is based on experience and not intuition. Our former Theory of Knowledge teacher told us that it is impossible for the human mind to create or think of something that doesn’t already exist. This would then mean that we could literary not think outside the box as this would be beyond our brain capacity.

If this is true then every form of art is an attempt to copy something that already exists which according to what was said earlier doesn’t need intuition. Thus it could be said that there is in fact no place for intuition in art. The counter argument would be to say that even though the artist is trying to copy the feeling misery by writing a poem about it he needs a place to start and a way to express his feelings on the subject and to do this he needs his intuition. So that, when writing his poem on misery he would use intuition to find the right words for his poem.