The differences among its contents constitute the Many of our knowledge. The conceptual-level mind studies this Many, but—being conceptual-level—it seeks wherever possible to find in the Many a One. The result of this approach is the unity of knowledge.
Human knowledge is not a mere collection, but a structure; it is a single body of interrelated cognitions. No item of knowledge is “self-contained”; taken as isolated from all the rest, no item even qualifies as knowledge. On the contrary, such an item, being closed to potentially relevant evidence, is a form of unreason, and as such must be rejected. This rejection does not mean a condemnation of cognitive specialization. What the theory condemns is any specialist who claims a logical right to ignore discoveries in all fields but his own, on the grounds that his exists in a cognitive vacuum and is thus self-validating.
Plato took the first, huge step. Judging by the Objectivist definition of “validity,” however, the step was fatally flawed.
except to act as a gadfly exposing the illusions of other men. Hume, for example, having concluded that all conclusions are groundless, declared that philosophy is nothing but a futile amusement at odds with the requirements of practical life.
Hume, for example, having concluded that all conclusions are groundless, declared that philosophy is nothing but a futile amusement at odds with the requirements of practical life.