Is Opinion Knowledge

Is Opinion Knowledge?
After witnessing a heated discussion on this question, led by a determined co- student, I have come to a personal conclusion.

Yes.

Opinion is knowledge. Knowledge is opinionated. An opinion is knowledgeable (most of the time- like mine is)

I must start off with defining the two terms before I get threatening remarks and extortion threats from anyone who reads this. An opinion is defined as ‘belief’, ‘view held probable’ (Taken from the Little Oxford Dictionary).
Knowledge is defined as ‘information’, ‘facts’ (Taken from the Little Oxford Dictionary).
What The Oxford Dictionary means by ‘facts’ is- ‘known/believed to be true universally’.

Let’s go back to the 1st century when elements were broadly defined as- earth, fire, water...
During this time, common knowledge told you that there was nothing as atoms. Everything was either earth, or water or fire. This common knowledge was an opinion.

After six centuries, The Hindu philosophers at that time enforced ideologies amongst many- saying that an atom was the ‘will of God’. They were small pieces of earth, water and fire that were invisible to the eye and functioned under Bramha’s will.

This little story survived only for a century before the Greeks set out to change it. They gave the world an apparently comprehensive view of what they called ‘matter’, as being particles of substances. A liquid had these so called ‘atoms’ and these would slide over each other and would be smooth, unlike ‘atoms’ in a solid that would not display any kind of movement.

During the Islamic Golden Age, a young scientist al-Ghazali set out by saying that there was something smaller than an atom. Inside it were secrets which only Allah knew.

Different cultures kept what they thought was ‘knowledge’ and omitted anything else. The Hindus thought that Bramha was the controlled of the world and thus the atom, so the Islamic view was made redundant.

After centuries of haziness and confusion about the smallest existing unit we call an atom, John Dalton stepped up to propose his idea of an atom. He defined it as an infinitely small, indestructible part of a substance. How Dalton came up with this theory is not recorded in the ‘Handbook of Scientific Achievements’, however it is known that his theory was accepted as it proved useful to solve many Chemistry puzzles at that point of time. Scientists regarded this as knowledge and hailed the genius in Dalton. Taking his word to be true- great scientist like Avogadro, Lavoisier, Proust expanded on his work. The world was finally aware of what the smallest unit in nature was!

This opinion was thought to be knowledge for a very long time indeed. Then, in the late 1800’s the world saw a brave (or mad) scientist who had the audacity to challenge their knowledge. All the scientists were appalled by John Thomson and his discovery of this strange particle known as an electron?!However, his logical solution was enough to make the orthodox views redundant. He proposed a ‘plum pudding’ model of an atom, where positive charges and electrons(!) were clustered together.

Dalton’s idea was disregarded suddenly when Ernst Rutherford, his very own student conducted an experiment with a gold coil and alpha particles. Rutherford, Geiger, Marsden shot alpha particles at a gold foil in vacuum and observed that most particles passed right through, however some got deflected and a fraction bounced back. The professor was taken aback, and his student presented an atom with a rigid centre of positive charge and negative charges circling it in vacuum.

On further investigation Rutherford found out that the rigid centre had particles called ‘protons’. He proposed that the basic constituents of an atom were a rigid mass of protons in the centre encircles by electrons surrounding it.

After thirty years of silence, James Chadwick discovered neutrons as uncharged particles in the centre of an atom- known to be called as a nucleus.

With the new image of Quantum Physics striding beside him, Neils Bohr showed the world another view of an atom- the Bohr Model. He described the atom with electrons orbiting the nucleus in ‘quantum leaps’ and categorized these as electron shells. Further studies led to the conclusion that each shell barring the first one was not allowed to have more than 8 electrons. Scientists like Erwin Schrodinger and Louis de Broglie perfected this model and gave us- (after a lot of editing)- AN ATOM.

Now we know what an atom is!

Wait- ‘quarks?’...’up-quarks?’...’leptons?’...no- stop- please!

Today, young scientists at laboratories like CERN are drawing themselves into the miniscule nuclei to find an answer. Now they say that even a nucleus is mainly vacuum with a combination of up and down quarks and smaller undecipherable sub atomic particles.

If a solid is 99.9% vacuum- why is it a SOLID!?

No one knows...

Thus the moral of this painful and time taxing research summary is- knowledge is opinion!
One can see how the opinion of few was taken to be knowledge- it was universally accepted to be true. Over the years, opinion was the crust of knowledge. These kept changing so the knowledge kept changing. The transition is palpable. From earth, water and fire this much debated atom has become a ‘ball of vacuum’. What next?