Explaining Knowledge To A 10-Year-Old Kid

How do we know what we know! And how Science comes into the picture!

Photo by MART PRODUCTION from Pexels

It’s interesting to think about how we know what we know. And no, I am not talking about just academic knowledge or professional skills. But literally, everything we know, right from how to talk to religious stories and the latest celeb gossips.

If you think about it, we generally know from our observation of surroundings, our experiences, and through parents, society, schools, books, etc., all of which can be broadly classified into the following 4 categories.

1. Authority: The same family, society, institutions, books, etc, which are all but authorities.
2. Intuition: Sometimes, we also know via our instinct, what we love to call our gut feeling or intuition. Like knowing (sometimes) if someone is lying to you, even without any clue or evidence.
3. Senses and Experience: It is through our senses (our instruments to observe) and the resulting experience that we know the most.
4. Induction / Deduction Reasoning: We can also know further through reasoning, beyond what we already know.

Let’s say you visit a village in Nepal and you only see grazing animals there. Through reasoning known as Inductive Reasoning, you conclude that all animals there are Herbivores. (that…