"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." ~Victor Hugo
Transcendental thoughts
Ever felt an arousal? a determination from deep inside? You can feel it creeping through your skin straight into your head. It all starts collecting, the adrenaline rises and you cannot feel anything else but this accumulation. It boils you but still has a calming effect. The motivation, the inspiration, this feeling seems eternal. But yet it is ephemeral. Hmmm... seems like you just struck an Idea!
I've been trying to discern between few words and the concepts that they suggest. Data, Information, Knowledge and Idea. On the exterior they seem pretty much the same, but you try to divide them and you start figuring how they are dependent on each other and how they start fitting into some sort of a hierarchy.
Data, Information, Knowledge and Idea
Everything you read, hear or see, voluntarily or involuntarily gets registered somewhere. The topic might not interest you, but still it gets registered. We can call this data. If you start looking for data about specific subjects, you are searching for Information. Voluntarily you take notes either in memory or in writing if you dont trust your memory. As you keep gathering information, you seem to start making some connections between varied data and you get an underlying understanding of how things work. That is Knowledge. The more information you gather, the more connections you make and your knowledge keeps increasing. Knowledge is Power.
After you have drowned yourself in knowledge, you start feeling an itch. The itch tells you that you still dont know something. It sits in some corner of your mind. And then in some weird place and time, an upsurge occurs. The things around you dont make sense, the neurons in your brain are working overtime, synapses are being created and the neural network of your brain keeps coagulating ... and then final strike... it hits you! You have an Idea.
Idea is something that is truly original, not clouded or biased by anyone, just by your knowledge! You hold on to your idea more than you ever did for anything else. You haven't even thought over the merits and de-merits of it. It just feels right.
"...Beneath this mask there is more than flesh and bones. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof!"
~ V for Vendetta
The whole of human civilisation has been built around one thing - an idea. First, there were problems. Problems gave trouble, troubles gave knowledge and then struck the Idea - the solution. Slowly, each problem was overcome and the civilisation moved towards what could be called as taking its Natural course. The word natural is intriguing now. When we wonder how our Ideas actually occur, we have no idea! (ironic, eh?). Deeper searching shows that they were not completely unbiased. The bias was the Laws of nature. For solutions, we look at how Nature overcomes its problems and we look for Patterns. Patterns somehow find parallels in a weird manner. They are the driving force that lead you to the crescendo and the eventual climax of the conception of an Idea. Eventually, it seems that you never got the idea, the Idea got to you!
Enigma
Now this leads to a conundrum - an enigma that can only be solved with deep questioning. If ideas come from Laws of Nature, what ideas formed these laws?
5 comments:
The itch tells you that you still dont know something -- very true. I recollect reading somewhere that the ratio of things known to us to things unknown to us has remained the same so far. It might appear trite, but of course the more you know, more clear is the 'knowledge' of your limitations.
The difference between information and knowledge is quite important. In today's information explosion age, we are bombarded with data from all the sides (internet, TV, newspapers etc). However, we tend to become merely well-informed. Digesting the information and consciously studying it takes time, which is essential for knowledge and I guess the sheer volume of information and fast paced life makes this task near-impossible.
Good article. As for the last question posed by you -- I think, if we get to know the answer, then that will be a huge leap. So far, we just try to figure out how things work in nature and sometimes why. How they came to be the way they are, and what ideas caused it is, I guess, an unanswerable question right now.
Your comments are most cherished for the manner in which you add on to the perspective i try to project. I feel like replying to each point, but each of my replies seems like another post!
Hi Sudhu, thanks for your registration with IndiBlogger. We've just released a new badge for photo enthusiasts - if you could put it up on your blog, we'd really appreciate it!
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Btw, It's nice to see that someone still reads Carl Sagan. :-)
Don't you think that its time for you to write a blog? :-)
I really cherish reading your blogs. Please don't discontinue writing.
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