Kevin Rodriguez
Prompt #4: "Suspension of disbelief" is an essential feature of theater. Is it essential in other Aok? Develop your answer with reference to two Aok.
A few years ago, when I first entered high school, there was a point where the beliefs that I held at the time were ingrained into my mind. Specifically, I held fundamentalist Christian beliefs, which included the belief in Creation. When I first began studying biology, it was essentially impossible to progress any further in the class without using evolution as a basis for the biological processes. Although I strongly did not believe in what I was being taught, I accepted the knowledge to get through the class. I had believed that the universe was six-thousand years old, and that the idea of it being any older was insane, and I also believed that all types of animals had always existed, and that evolution was impossible. But I suspended those disbeliefs for the sake of learning biology.
This leads to the main discussion on the "suspension of disbelief", which to define it, means that an individual accepts knowledge given to them although they know that to them, the knowledge is wrong. That is why it is essential in theater, since a play cannot be taken literally because that would take out all the enjoyment. But for other areas of knowledge, like science and history, can it also be said that this idea of suspending disbelief is necessary for understanding knowledge in those areas? I would argue that since to gain more knowledge you would need to remove all biases, and that since beliefs are a type of bias, the idea of suspending disbelief is essential for other areas of knowledge.
Going back to my past experiences with biology, it can clearly be seen that biases had to be removed to gain knowledge. And for science as an area of knowledge, I would argue that this is how all knowledge is obtained, making the suspension of disbelief essential. There are a few terms that need to be cleared up, though, in order to develop my claims. First off, a belief is any set of ideas which does not necessarily need to have support to justify it. A justified belief, though, is what knowledge is, with justification coming from memory, logic, or observable evidence. And since justified belief is knowledge, previous knowledge is what prevents one from new knowledge in science, which leads to the next term that needs defining, bias. Bias is anytime an individual's beliefs interfere with the pursuit of knowledge, therefore, using this definition, justified belief based on logic is what prevents one from learning new scientific knowledge, while justified belief based on observations do not. For example, to do biology, one must suspend their disbelief of evolution. The reasons for the disbelief of evolution must be from logic. Logically, one could say that since lizards do not lay chicken eggs, evolution could not be true because it states that chickens are descendants of lizards. One could base it on their religion, which is its own area of knowledge. This knowledge based on logic does not allow one to learn about evolution, but knowledge based on observation such as the fact that lizards lay eggs do not have to be compromised. In order to gain new knowledge in science, disbelief cannot exist for that bias would make it nearly impossible to explore science as an area of knowledge. However, it can be argued that you would not need to suspend your disbelief in science because unlike theater, scientific ideas have no purpose except to exist, so to not suspend disbelief would not influence the scientific idea. However, this argument falls short because this reasoning would not allow for science to exist, since every individual would never agree with anybody on anything.
That is why suspending disbelief is just as necessary for science as it is for theater, despite the differences in the natures of those areas of knowledge, but the necessity of the idea is for differing reasons in both areas of knowledge.
History is an area of knowledge where one must suspend their disbelief, which on the surface may not make sense because history does not involve much belief, or so it seems. But there is quite a bit of belief pertaining to history, and once again, one must suspend their disbelief toward historical information when the knowledge that one has is not made valid through observations. But is history not all just observations? It would seem that history is set and done, and that all history simply must be discovered, but history is much more complicated than that. The interesting thing about history as an area of knowledge is that it is not just hard facts that you are looking for; one must analyze the perspectives and validity of historical knowledge. This is why one must suspend their disbelief in history, for beliefs cloud one's ability to analyze history. For example, someone who believes that the holocaust never happened, as absurd of an idea that is, must suspend that disbelief to study the history of Germany. Though with beliefs as extreme as this, history becomes nearly impossible to study. One must allow themselves to take in knowledge that they may not believe in to improve their overall understanding of the area of knowledge. Like science, basic history is based off of observable evidence, but the difference is that history can also be based off of memory. And with memory, there are no real biases that can affect that knowledge, the only problem with memory is that it is not entirely accurate, since humans omit certain details that they may not have been paying much attention. I argue that memory does not affect historical knowledge, therefore the disbelief that must be suspended can only be those that deal with observable evidence and logic. You cannot go into a situation not having any knowledge at all, that is impossible, but there is knowledge that cannot allow one to understand the area of knowledge better, and in history, this knowledge is anything that goes against the observable evidence of historical artifacts or historical records.
Suspension of disbelief must not be mistaken as suspending belief, there is some overlap, but primarily, suspending disbelief is just taking out what goes against the knowledge being presented. That is why it must be necessary for both the areas of knowledge of science and history.