If someone claims that both the division of knowledge into disciplines Essay

If someone claims that both the division of knowledge into disciplines and the division of the world into countries on a map are artificial, what does this mean - Essay Example What are the processes underlying the compelling desire of human to dissect and divide, are these processes comparable, how has the divides occurred - these perplexing questions have puzzled generations of outstanding scholars, but still remain unanswered. The world is multi-dimensional with numerous natural boundaries: mountains and rivers, deserts and forests, fields and lakes, plateaus and slumps compose a unique and highly diverse image of the Earth. These natural boundaries have provided mankind with references points allowing people to move from one point to another, travel, hunt, explore the remote areas always using these natural points to return to the native places and family. Evidently, these natural boundaries have played - and continue to play - an essential role in shaping human civilisation, as we know it, but they have failed to fully satisfy the needs of human society. The artificial boundaries dividing the nations and communities have been created artificially to address these implicit needs. Knowledge does not have a clear defined surface area or natural boundaries; its abstract nature makes it barely possible to calculate or quantify it; senses and measurements do not provide the appropriate tools to divide it. Nonetheless, mankind has also felt the need to divide it into several areas. Perhaps one of the key objectives of such divide was the desire to establish the missing reference points in order to facilitate navigation from one place to another: the artificial boundaries within the body of knowledge were intended to perform the same function the natural boundaries in the physical world played. However, even if that the factors/reasons underlying division of the physical world and the abstract realm of knowledge are similar, the implications and nature of the boundaries are likely to differ signification. Although the geographical boundaries and the divide between different areas of knowledge have been drawn by human, the nature of the boundaries is non-comparable due to several reasons. Firstly, the geographical boundaries, by definition, do not allow for free crossing; knowledge does not imply this sine qua non condition. Secondly, the nature of knowledge is complex, dynamic, and multifaceted: it is not approachable with mere senses or mere thinking; it is rather a process which gets even richer when the separated areas overlap. The ongoing debate about the definition and elements of knowledge1 vividly illustrates why comparing the abstract and physical boundaries lacks credibility and is probably doomed to failure. Furthermore, even the origins of knowledge are not known either: epistemology or theory of knowledge, the branch of philosophy that explores the origins and sources of knowledge, the assumptions upon which knowledge is based, and what we 'can know' and 'do know' fails to provide a clear and exhaustive answer to this question2. The origins of modern epistemological debate can be traced back to the past philosophers. The famous Cartesian mind/body duality introduced by famous philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes divorced body from mind and thinking from sensing.