As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more complex and mysterious. Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take.

The

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has always fascinated us – from the very dawn of civilization, when everything seemed shrouded in mystery and the unexplainable was the realms of the gods. The curiosity of the human nature is the driving force of our accelerated evolution and the reason why we have developed methods of systematic study – so that we are better able to understand and control our surroundings. As Sir Francis Bacon said - “

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is power”. At the heart of

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is the search for truth; of the many ways

people

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try to unravel the mysteries of the

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, scientific research is deemed to be a more accurate understanding of the world.

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because, in essence, scientific research is based on gathering observable and measurable evidence by formulating and testing hypothesis in reproducible experiments. Epistemology, the study of

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and how it is acquired, shows us that

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gathering is a cumulative process – new theories, no matter how revolutionary, have a basis in previous theories. Saying that things become more complex and mysterious as we acquire more

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means operating under the false assumption that progress ismeasured by how much we have yet to discover. When humanity is at the start of the line, in terms of understanding the

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and its secrets, progress should be measured by how far we have come, not how far we still have to go. We should not compare our current

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with the sum of all

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, but rather with how little we knew in the past. Take,

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, biology and how much we have progressed from believing that human sickness is a result in the imbalance of humors, to the current day advanced understanding of organs, tissues, cells – down to the DNA level. The same can be said for the rudimentary notions of geography of the past, namely the

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that the Earth was flat and that the Sun was orbiting around it. Comparing these notions to the current understanding of tectonics, landscape formation and astrophysics theories like the existence of dark mater, we can see how far our understanding of the

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has progressed, one step at a time. And while we can in no way say that we know everything that there is to know, we can certainly say that we are able to accomplish so much more than in the past, all thanks to a better understanding of our environment. As

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, the amount of

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the average individual possesses, has been steadily growing over the ages – the same can be said for our comprehension. What children learn and are able to grasp in schools today would have been part of the mystery of the

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in the past.

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increase in

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was observed by Buckminster Fuller and named “the

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Doubling Curve”. He noticed that until 1900 human

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doubled approximately every century and by the end of World War II

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was doubling every 25 years. If one were able to travel through time to a period like the Middle Ages, our

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, technology, behaviors and speech would be seen as witchcraft. Like Arthur C. Clarke said: 'Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.' Part of the issue of thinking that the

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becomes progressively incomprehensible is our wonder with the

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, which, while understandable,

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inspires the

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that true

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is somehow unattainable.

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feel overwhelmed by the vastness and complexity of the

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and hold the belief that our simple mind cannot comprehend it -

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psychological phenomenon is called the fallacy of insignificance. Colin Wilson in The Stature of Man claims that

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fallacy is an effect of modern day society that conditions individuals to lack self-worth, as a mechanism of ensuring compliance –

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want to become part of the system, in order to escape their feelings on unimportance.

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end up operating on the

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that as an individual, they do not mattermuch in the grand scheme of things, which is why they should belong to something greater that gives their existence meaning.

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, but not least,

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want to believe that the

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maintains its shroud of mystery because the

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of attaining full, complete

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is frightening – a fully known

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is predictable and boring, like professor Farnsworth from Futurama stipulates: : ”And, now that I've found all the answers, I realize that what I was living for were the questions!”