Object 1.Anastrolabe

My first idea is that every new technology is based on the set of skills, knowledge and available tools.  Let’s consider an astrolabe.

I came in touch with this object in the museum. This ancient instrument was used in astronomy to measure the altitude above the horizon, latitude on land and calm seas. However, when Portuguese explorers started searching for the sea route to India, that tool prevented them from sailing into the open sea, because they had to be always near the shore in order to use it. When they had to overcome that difficulty to obtain new knowledge, they challenged the functions of that tool and developed a mariner’s astrolabe.

Based on the advancement of the existing tool, some current knowledge plus its historical development (as they applied the Ancient Egyptian pyramid construction rules) mariner’s astrolabe opened new possibilities for explorers, giving them access to new knowledge of the world that shapes our current contemporary knowledge of the world today.

This object clearly illustrates the gradual development of our knowledge. Our current knowledge is based on the improvements of the previous knowledge. These improvements are possible because people use their knowledge to create tools that extend natural possibilities of our  body, and give us more information about the world around us. Such new tools give us wider access to the world, help us discover new things, create new knowledge and develop it further.

Object 2 Monet, Claude. 1840-1926 Waterloo Bridge. Effect of Fog.

However, not always our current knowledge is based on the improvement  of the previous knowledge. Sometimes it emerges from rejecting the canons and regulations of it. I would like to illustrate it with a Monet painting that I saw in the Hermitage.

Due to his dramatic life circumstances and some physical disadvantages Monet literally saw the world differently. Trying to create new knowledge in his field, he broke the rules of realism and was rejected by his time. Critics made fun of his mere impression, formal art establishment at the Annual Salon did not display his oil paintings.

His long road to acceptance as well as the road of Impressionism  as a form of new knowledge that we consider to be outstanding today, shows that new knowledge sometimes seems far too different from the current one. New knowledge needs to deny the tradition, rebel against the current rules of the epoch. But this rejection is necessary to leap into the unknown and develop knowledge on the new stage.

This object illustrates the second role of previous knowledge that I call complete rejection of tradition. Such rejection is necessary because our knowledge does not always develop gradually. Sometimes revolutionary changes are essential  and inevitable for the further knowledge development.

Object 3. Photo by Lynn Johnson 2017

While the first object illustrates the gradual cumulative effect  of gaining new knowledge and the second one reveals the case of complete rejection of  tradition in order to give way to  new knowledge, the third object illustrates the tremendous leap our science has made that challenges the very foundations of our knowledge of the world and ourselves.

I came in touch with this photo while scrolling my Facebook news page. The picture of a human face “suspended between its donor and a recipient”. It is a reminder of the deep connection between one’s face and identity.

It challenges not only our basic values of what builds our identity, what we consider to be human but also the very boundaries of science that constructs our knowledge of the world and of what is human.  Living in the world with a new face, new identity and new values will definitely change the whole picture of knowledge that we are constructing for ourselves now. This is a great example of how technological and scientific development led to creation of some new kind of knowledge that requires new ethical implications, new rules and creates by all means absolutely new reality in the current moment. The picture illustrates the suspended transition between current knowledge and new one that we are about to step into.