Shared And Personal Knowledge

The topic deals with two kinds of knowledge, this includes shared and personal knowledge. Shared knowledge is what we obtain and learn from sources such as school, other institutions and people. It requires specific vocabulary. Another approach to gaining knowledge is based on experience and sense perception. We call this personal knowledge because we learn this individually with our own experiences. In this case it means how they interact, and to influence each other as a whole. One of the areas of knowledge I chose is history. The purpose of historians is to interpret and explain past events and how they affected our modern day world. The other area of knowledge I chose is human sciences which includes all the studies concerning human …show more content…
As for the historians, I believe that a piece of information that is verified by reliable primary and secondary sources is important. This is because historical events that happened before our time could have been altered for various incentives. This fabrication of historical facts and claims could have been altered by powerful parties. This makes it difficult for historians to make a claim without having proof. For example during history class we talked about the end of the Cold War. We had to discuss this issue and decide which were the main factors enabled the collapse of communism. After analyzing different sources from different historians we determined that Gorbachev’s policy, the Self Defense Initiative and the strength of nationalism in the satellite states also played role in the fall of communism. History focuses on knowledge which is justified by evidence. Historians observe primary and secondary sources. The sources provides picture of a certain event, which becomes shared knowledge. Shared knowledge in terms of history means the general theory created by historians. It must be proven. Primary sources are generally reliable, especially if they are from unbiased people, therefore having a clearer picture of what actually happened and what did not. Secondary sources are less reliable because they have hindsight bias; they are viewing history from a backwards perspective. A …show more content…
When we study history we accept the main ideas and theories of historians if they are supported by evidence. A trustworthy historian should be objective in order to provide a picture of a certain event authentically. For example several historians claim that the reasons why America bombed Japan in the Second World War was that the American government wanted to end the war as soon as possible. However they also question if the bombing was necessary. In this case to a certain extent it is necessary to accept, because we do not evidence to disprove it. However when we analyze an event by reading documents, which are not based on the same opinion. We can create our own opinion which can help us to obtain our own perspective, which can co-exist with the other theories as well. On the hand family history is also shared knowledge but it is not generated. Usually family history spreads by communication when one family member tells the story to another one. For example I heard the story of my grandfather who was most probably killed in the Soviet Union in 1944. There is historical evidence that more than two hundred thousands of Hungarians died during the Second World War. We do not have evidence that he died, however nobody ever returned from his unit. Therefore it is presumable that he died as well. Also this is the way how the family members tell the story to each other. Because of lack of evidence, sometimes the