Promulgation Of My Newly Definitive Knowledge/Belief Differentiation.

Long before my above book had shown that our imaginations are stimulated by reality to rational beliefs transformable to knowledge by evaluation of their compliance or non-compliance with this reality, or to beliefs beyond this reality-evaluation in principle or pro tem practice and which can thus only be accepted, rejected or suspended as belief, I had intended to join the debating society at the University of Glasgow when I went up in 1957 in the days when such as Donald Dewar were already leading lights therein. However, prior to my potential joining, I attended a few debates as a listener. During my last such attendance, I heard a debater disparaging his opponent by quoting an MP of the past who did so by saying, ‘I have listened carefully to the honourable gentleman, and I regret to say that I am none the wiser, which shows that the Jawbone of an Ass isn’t the weapon it was in Samson’s day’. Thus, while I noted that such comments were entertaining, they contributed nothing to clarify the issue in hand; that such debating was not for me and I decided not to apply for membership. Later, while staying in a hall of residence during the three years of my PhD project, I acquired a discussion group by mutual attraction which consisted of undergraduates, one in classics (a great admirer of A. E. Housman), one in divinity, and three post-graduates (one in geology, one in mathematics and myself in physical chemistry). In this group we did not debate, we discussed a wide range of subjects by first attempting to establish a knowledge-only starting point and proceeding by comparing interim conclusions with what we already knew of reality, and so on to a conclusion we could live with before another topic arose.

By way of example, in 1961, we had the Cuban missile crisis in which I identified as the starting knowledge, as the apparently non-disputed fact that the soviet missiles in Cuba had not been hidden and were clearly visible to US over-flights, from which I deduced that the Russian leader wanted them to be seen in order to attract US attention, to have the US consider what he intended to do with these missiles, and when they were sufficiently worried, he would suggest removing them, if the US would agree to remove their missiles from, say, Turkey. Having thus been able to live with this conclusion, we would have turned to something else. However, I remember this example of our general approach to the resolution of problems, because I remember my subsequent application of this particularconclusion to a subsequent event. One morning, while I was recording my forthcoming absence for weekend in the book provided for such purposes on the hall table of the residence, I overheard two German first year students who, while waiting for the third of the trio, were discussing whether or not the Cuban missile crises was serious enough to cause them to return to their respective homes in Germany, and the effect this would have on their studies were the world not to come to its end. Having completed my diary entry, I excused my overhearing them, and briefly recounted the conclusions reached on this topic by my discussion group and our reasons for these conclusions. Their mood immediately brightened, and they said that they would talk it over with their third colleague; but that it was already unlikely that they would be going home. It turned out that all three remained in Glasgow with no interruption to their studies.

However, despite the time wasted in irresolvable debate from time immemorial to the present, academe itself was not distracted from its traditional objectives by what is now termed the Woke. In contrast, when I first went to primary school in Scotland we were taught reading, writing and arithmetic, English language, history, geography and nature-study from age 5 to 12 before being separated on the basis of ability into streams A, B, C, T, and G of the secondary school, with stream A taking Latin and French, with stream B taking French but not Latin, with stream C (girls only) taking commercial, shorthand, typing and domestic science (cooking), with stream T (boys only) taking Technical Drawing, and Wood and Metal Working. In all streams, pupils also took science (physics, chemistry and biology) mathematics (geometry, algebra and trigonometry) English language and literature, history and geography according to their streamed abilities, with all having two periods of music and two periods of gymnastics per week of five days of eight periods each. In my time, most left after three years, while a few went on to years four and five, while even fewer completed six years, particularly if they intended a university sequel. Those who chose to leave at ~ 15 years of age were directly employable as, for example, banking and accountancy trainees or craft apprentices.

First, second and third prizes were awarded each year in all subjects and publicised in the local newspapers to an interested public and even in my small town (~10,000 population) a gold dux and gold proxime accesit medal was awarded each year by the town council to pupils with the highest and second highest annual exam marks overall at the end of the third year before those who were proceeding to the fourth, fifth and sixth years were transferred to the senior secondary school in the neighbouring larger town. Indeed, such was the local interest in education that those from the smaller town who did go to university had the opportunity to be paid the rate for gardener’s labourers in the smaller town’s ‘parks department’ during the university summer break of twelve weeks to defray their annual living expenses. As to the standing of a Scottish education in those days, I recall a recent letter toThe Daily Telegraph from a 1961 entrant to the Royal Navy (the year I entered my post-graduate activities at the University of Glasgow) which commented on the deterioration of educational standards, by recalling that in his day, entrants who had passed through the Scottish schooling system were exempt from a Navy entrance exam, while English entrants had to sit and pass it; and that nowadays all entrants have to sit and pass it; but that some of them are now required to take a remedial course before they are permitted to sit it.

However, despite this high regard throughout Britain, for earlier forms of Scottish education, there never was any definitive differentiation of the knowledge/belief dichotomy within it, not even within the teaching of the experimental (knowledge-only) sciences, nor within any of the subsequent training and apprenticeship programmes or university courses, let alone any differentiation of the dichotomies of truth/falsehood, wisdom/folly, right/wrong and good/bad in any non-science professional or craft subject. Thus, there has never been any means of defence against belief-only activists, whether Woke or not. Accordingly, this website has been at pains to reveal that Woke beliefs, (which are definitively not knowledge) can never be defeated by debate, no matter how much freedom of speech is tolerated. Indeed only debate-terminating conclusive knowledge can defeat belief and prevent its implementation, which is the compelling reason why the foregoing dichotomies must now be definitively differentiated by the means advocated in this website and why these definitive differentiations must now be introduced to the educational process at the earliest possible stage and must be continually reinforced throughout its duration.

To these ends, this website has demonstrated that the cry for freedom of speech to drive the Woke from the field is not only futile, it is actually the means by which the Woke have gained their initial foothold and continue to promulgate their belief-only ideas; that this freedom of speech permits the freedom to debate opinion/counter-opinion which is never more than the freedom to debate belief/ counter-belief supported either way by partially selected facts/counter-facts, evidence/counter-evidence or news/false news, no set of which is ever debate-terminating conclusive knowledge. At this point, therefore, while this website demonstrates the need for my newly definitive knowledge/ belief differentiation to be widely and publicly accepted to the extent of ensuring its incorporation throughout the educational process and to the extent of replacing belief with knowledge in all future political policy-making, this being the only means by which current belief-only policy mistakes can be avoided, the only means by which elections can become a choice between party-specific knowledge-only alternatives, and the only means by which the Woke can be driven from the field.

Accordingly, I hereby discontinue this website at this point, until I have acquired allies with already established access to current media outlets. At this point therefore, I recognise that without the support of media allies of recognised standing, I am unlikely to achieve the publicity necessary for a successful public campaign for the replacement of belief with knowledge in all future policy-making to the maximum extent possible, this target having been the objective of my print-on-demand book of 2010, The Rational Trinity: Imagination, Belief and Knowledge and of this website, which I will resume in due course as may be required in support of my now intended media campaign. However, before resuming this series of Articles to record my subsequent progress in this regard, I now append Article 84. 19/10/21.