Building Knowledge

I am very much struck by the idea of phenomenology that we are all individually our own sources of knowledge. We gain our knowledge through our own experiences and perspectives, and it is these experiences and perspectives upon which scientific thinking builds. Merleau-Ponty writes, "I am the absolute source, my existence does not stem from my antecedents, from my physical and social environment; instead it moves out towards them and sustains them, for I alone bring into being for myself (and therefore into being in the only sense that the word can have for me) the tradition which I elect to carry on, or the horizon whose distance from me would be abolished - since that distance is not one of its properties - if I were not there to scan it with my gaze...To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign-langugae, as is geography in relation to the countryside in which we have learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie or a river is" (277). In a way, this makes me think of Emerson and his idea of extremities in nature. How can something be so close - used and seen all the time - and be an extremity? Emerson writes, "Show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature" (The American Scholar). Here, I feel Emerson embraces his own perspective and life experiences to better understand the world around him, and thus build his own knowledge. He rids himself of previous knowledge to attempt to understand the extremities of nature, and thus become "the absolute source." An extremity means of yourself. Through our own perspectives and experiences, the world has the power to evoke a sensation that the world belongs to us, but there is also an intimate distance. This paradox resurfaces in Merleau-Ponty as he instructs us to "return to the 'things 'themselves'" (277) to build our own knowledge, when knowledge of these things already exists.