Paradigm Shifts and the Evolution of Knowledge

No person was born with all the answers or an absolute state of comprehension of the depth, scope, and mysteries of this world and existence in general. Neither was our species put on this earth at our origins fully advanced and with absolute and complete knowledge of existence. It would defeat the purpose of a state of conscious existence based on growth, learning, and experience, which obviously requires the passage of time as well as a relative mental blank slate for the conscious beings involved.

Without this, novelties, learning, and experience would be both impossible and unnecessary if all information and knowledge were presented to you immediately after your creation and placement in existence. 

In order for advancement and evolution of conscious organisms to occur, there often has to be a catalyst for change and growth. In regards to knowledge and the fields of study within the human experience, human beings often form paradigms within the respective fields of knowledge. 

       Paradigms are models, or patterns, that form the basis and foundation of understanding in fields of knowledge. These paradigms can vary in how long they last before they ease into, or are forced to, adapt, change, or be dissolved entirely and replaced by a totally new model and framework of understanding.

     When a paradigm shift occurs in regards to fields of knowledge and ideas/information, it is often a very beautiful and exciting thing. However, the people who have built their whole life and reputation on the old paradigm may resist significantly to the change that is occuring, and may not be willing to move with the times or compromise their own presumptions and beliefs in regards to their respective fields of knowledge

         Even though paradigm shifts can be very exciting, they can and often do lead to disruptions, shake ups, and even conflict, both violent and nonviolent, in the fields of knowledge they occur in. This happens because of the old model resisting the change, since it obviously would lose authority and power if there is a new paradigm put in place. People with power and the ideas/paradigms/systems that give them power always will resist paradigm shifts, sometimes even violently

Since I believe the potential amount of ideas are possibly infinite, then the scope of knowledge would be boundless. We, as humans and vessels for consciousness, face both a blessing and a curse in our temporal state of existence and our relative blank slate of knowledge we were born with and our species came into existence with. 

We have the blessing of continuous learning, experience, advancement and development as we progress through time both as an individual and as a collective species. 

However, we are cursed by our mortality and our physical and brain limitations, as well as our destructive tendencies that come with clinging on to ideas and paradigms that become outdated and hinder our advancement and evolution.

 We kill each other over political and religious paradigm shifts, and some of the ideas we access in our minds and bring to this reality can very much lead to our destuction and many of them have already led to the deaths of millions of people.

      In order for us to understand reality, we often have to compartmentalize and model more complex aspects of reality to be able to process what we are studying.

 This modeling can be good for simplifying complex ideas and information to present to a less knowledgable and intellectually younger audience, but you can always run the risk of an oversimplication or miss a component of the field you are studying entirely, which obviously limits your ability to comprehend the subject or aspect of the subject you are studying to its completeness.

Don't get me wrong, there are simplicities in reality. Not everything is super complex, but within complex fields of knowledge, oversimplifying these fields can be detrimental to your understanding of them.

         Also, since every field of knowledge is interwoven and interconnected with each other, rigid, confining models that oversimplify and aren't very flexible can make it difficult for a common understanding of the fluidity and connectedness of these fields to be developed and for the gaps between respective fields to be bridged or new ones to be discovered entirely.

       Rigid, oversimplified, and confining models of understanding very much choke the advancement of humanity and hinder the evolution of knowledge. This is why paradigm shifts are not only essential, they are inevitable and will occur whether you want them to or not. Since I have faith in the infiniteness of existence, ideas, and information, I believe the learning and knowledge potential and the potential for new experiences for conscious entities like us humans and the potential others that exist is truly as boundless and limitless as all of creation is.