The Relationship Between Doubt And Confidence In Knowledge

Doubt and confidence are key sources of intellectual understanding and development. Doubt creates curiosity, which drives experts to understand more and research with greater depth, while confidence provides certainty of truth. But doubt also results in uncertainty and lack of confidence, which is disadvantageous in the production of knowledge. Is confidence even valuable in the production of knowledge? How confident can we be in knowledge? Does increased knowledge imply increased ignorance? Is society stronger with doubt or confidence in knowledge? To answer these questions, I will look at the rise of confidence or doubt as knowledge increases in the natural sciences and history. Confidence in natural scientific knowledge is based on justification and doubt arises from lack of evidence. However, in history, confidence is based on factual knowledge, while doubt arises from competing interpretations. …show more content…
In discussing increasing knowledge, Goethe presents two essential topics that are necessary to understand before evaluating knowledge: doubt and confidence. Confidence is considered to be the state of feeling certain about the truth; confidence in knowledge is dependent on a person’s trust within the factual information they currently know. With little knowledge, one has strong confidence in the knowledge because it is relatively easy to master and grasp due to its small quantity and therefore limited difficulty. Doubt arises from a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction; doubt and confidence are inherent opposites due to their contention on the existence of