Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 7
INTRODUCTION WITH A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE which is safely stored in the mind as a reliable piece of information. All such pieces of information put together build a storehouse of human knowledge. How can we gain certain knowledge, and how can we determine which specific knowledge is false and which is true?. Again, by what means can we categorize knowledge as transient truth, substantial truth, eternal truth, conditional truth etc. ? It is only the human faculty of reasoning and rationality which ruminates these facts as they are fed into the brain, turns them over and over again and permutates them into various possible combinations. This mental process of sorting out the right from the wrong, the definite from the indefinite, is the mechanism of rationality. . The question arises as to how far this method of analysing the constituents of knowledge is reliable. When we reach this stage of our comprehension of rationality, other intriguing questions also begin to raise their heads. . We know, for instance, that the human mind has no consistency in relation to its own findings. We know for certain that whatever is considered rational in one age may not necessarily be considered rational in another. We know, without doubt, that the faculty of reasoning has been progressively developing and maturing ever since man emerged from the domain of the animal kingdom into the world of humans. From that time onward, the collective experience as it is amassed in the form of knowledge and truth in the human mind continued to improve the faculty of his reasoning and the quality of his rational appraisals. . As physical exercise improves muscle power, so also the mental, rational and retentive faculties develop and gain strength with mental exercise. It is this exercise perhaps which may also have contributed to a progressive evolutionary increase in the brain mass of animals. 7