Theory of science - Reflections

After almost two weeks of studies in the course are my thoughts fragmented. On one hand haven't I learned so much, even though I wrote 800 words about a relatively complicated text, but on the other hand haven't we had a lecture since the introduction. For me personally was it a disappointment that Dahlberg wasn't able to attend the lecture and seminar since my expertise on the subject initially was poor. But after reading the literature from Russel and blogs from my fellow students has my knowledge on the subject grown, which pleases me a lot. 

The general reasoning of Russel and the other philosophers is hard for me to grasp, especially since I'm an engineers. If I see a white table in the middle of the room will my first though be that what I see is the truth, that it's in fact a white table in front of me, and nothing else. I haven't reached the philosophical level of Russel yet in life, but to be honest doesn't that alert me much - a white table for me will always be a white table and I'm fine with that. 

Even though I don't always share Russels view on every question is it interesting to read his arguments. To question everything around us, as Russels does, is in my opinion healthy. How knowledge is created and how it travels between different carriers is important to highlight, since it's such a powerful tool. But if I understood Russels definition of knowledge correctly does it seem extremely hard, if not even impossible to posses knowledge. If that would be a real scenario would he lose me as a listener, since the complexity would take over the subject completely. As appears from above would a complementary seminar or/and lecture hopefully have given me more clarity on the question.

One important fact to take under consideration when reflecting upon Russels words, is who he was and what he has accomplished during his career. Not only the fact that the text is over 100 years old and still applies to todays society, Russel won the Nobel Prize in Literature 1950. In a perfect world shouldn't that fact affect me at all when reading and reflecting his text, but unfortunately my natural critical thinking and objectivity became compromised. I accepted his reasoning and arguments to 100 per cent at first, so I'm glad we had another week to reflect.

As an end to this blog post do I intend to take the spotlight from Russels and his take on knowledge to another smart man who discussed the question. 

- "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is strictly speaking a real factor in scientific research" - Albert Einstein