Knowledge Without Application Essays Examples

It is said by many that knowledge without application is useless – after all, what is the point of knowing something if it has no practical purpose in the real world. There is the idea that knowledge itself is meant to have an inherent purpose, solving particular needs (which is, itself, why humanity seeks that knowledge out). However, to claim that some type of knowledge has no application is presumptuous and somewhat short-sighted; just because we do not know how that knowledge would be applied, or if you feel the way this knowledge would be applied is not important, does not mean that the knowledge itself is useless. After all, finding knowledge is a means to solve the inherent problems we have as sentient beings, as we search for our collective purposes, seek out the unknown and assuage our fears of what we do not know. Knowledge is borne of our collective desire to know the answers to questions we might have about the world and how we fit into it; regardless of the kind of application it might have into a practically-minded society, knowledge is not diminished if it does not have an intrinsic, immediate use.
It is the very nature of our humanity that we explore the very nature of knowledge, and how it is created and discovered. If we presume that knowledge is created for the purpose of solving a problem, that is a tremendously useful perspective. Philosophers like Kant, for example, argue that man is uniquely concerned with the way he is meant to find his purpose in the universe. Basically, we seek out knowledge in order to solve the basic problems of humanity. We start from a place of uncertainty and doubt, where a person or a group of people understands that it wants to know something, but does not know it.
Needs are usually the catalyst for this search for knowledge – if someone is dying because of some kind of illness, the knowledge of what this illness is, how it works, and how to stop it, is a significant motivator for our search for knowledge. When we encounter a situation like this, we become aware of the gaps we have in our understanding of the world. As a result, we try to solve it by gaining knowledge through the exploration of math, science, literature, history and more. In this respect, we inherently gravitate toward seeking out knowledge that has applications, like the curing of diseases or the creation of devices and products that help us make our lives longer, healthier and easier.
That being said, some exceptions to this rule exist, as not all knowledge exists in order to solve pressing problems and to fill the gaps in things we do not know. We also produce knowledge in order to express ourselves, and explain our beliefs and thoughts to others. The arts is the most prominent example of this, as media and artistic works can often be considered a type of knowledge.
You can easily argue that the purpose of knowledge varies from one area to another, as different kinds of knowledge have different stakes for the human race. After all, the curing of diseases and helping people stay alive and prosperous is intrinsically more important as a pursuit than a particularly moving poem. While science and math allow us to gain a better objective understanding of the world, the humanities allow for subjective exploration of emotion, theme, nuance and the intangible aspects of human life. Depending on people’s priorities and perspectives, no two areas of knowledge are created equal, nor will they apply to them in equal ways.
However, this is not to say that pursuing the arts as a realm of knowledge is without value. On the contrary, the arts are a very important part of allowing people to find the purpose in their individual lives. While they don’t uncover universal truths that apply to everybody scientifically and logically, the arts knowledge that most people acquire relate mostly to the self. After all, the ‘application’ of knowledge and its worth is heavily dependent on what the person thinks of the importance of that information.
While a particularly good poem may not be applicable to people in the way that a cure for cancer might be, it can also hold value for someone who finds significant emotional, psychological or cultural worth in it. Through the arts, for instance, someone can gain a greater appreciation for the world around them, understand how their own personality and mind works on some level, and more. The ‘problems’ solved by the arts are not as clear cut and objective as the ‘problems’ seeking knowledge in math, science and medicine aim to solve.
Pursuing knowledge that does not have ‘application’ in the traditional sense – most notably the arts – is usually done through criticism of art and literature. This field sees scholars looking at a work of art or an artist, for example, and examining it through a special perspective to come away with connections or reflections on the meaning and significance of that art. For instance, an art critic might look at a Georgia O’Keeffe painting and recognize that her pictures of flowers are often symbolic explorations of the nature of femininity and the ways in which people perceive female genitalia. While this knowledge is not universally applicable – someone might just look at those paintings and simply see pictures of flowers with no subtext, or come away with a different meaning all together – this kind of knowledge is still valuable. While the pursuit of knowledge in the sciences is objective and meant to solve universal problems, the subjectivity of art leads to a different kind of exploration of knowledge.
When discussing the idea that knowledge without application is useless, one needs to recognize the two different, but still valuable, perspectives in which knowledge is defined. All knowledge solves a problem of some kind, and therefore has an ‘application.’ The argument, then, is where to draw the line between what applications are useful and which are useless. This line tends to be drawn between the objective and subjective, typically dealing mostly with the arts vs. the sciences. While the sciences are objectively thought to better our world by using knowledge to further a scientific understanding of the way our world works, this ignores the contributions that arts knowledge also brings to humanity as a whole. Though a scientist may use their knowledge to construct something that will have a major financial or scientific improvement for humanity, knowledge in the arts can also allow us to further our understanding of the emotional and aesthetic underpinnings of humanity and human life. While these two types of knowledge have different types of applications, none are inherently useless – no matter what kind of knowledge it is.