Knowledge is all about experiences and vision or foresightedness. It's the basic of knowledge. When we start transmitting knowledge we opt for education. Education is all about equipping people with knowledge, but education is only one means to impart knowledge. There are also several other tools like training, social interaction, self study, listening etc. Education is distinguished only because it's is or it has been more formalized with physical and intellectual infrastructure. All other tools except that of training for imparting knowledge are informal in their nature of transformation. Due to their informal structure all other tools lack standardization . Training may be formal , may also be informal and may be something in between formal and informal.
Let's try to understand knowledge. Knowledge is a combination of what we have and what we may have and we will have. It has both certain things and uncertain things. And it has everything that was in the past , that is in present and that may be in future. Probability and even imagination are the parts of knowladge. Many and many new realities have originated in the wild imagination. Flying in the was just a blizzare imagination in history . And this imagination led to the concrete creation. Imagination is the womb for real. Same is with internet. Internet that had redefined whole existence. Similar is the case with probability. A lot of failures construct the road to certainty. If there would not be Dalton, Heisenberg arrival was impossible. So is the knowledge.
Certainty, probabilities and imagination, all come from ideas. It's the idea which impregnate our mind with imagination which gives birth to shaky probabilities like infants which ultimately grow into adult reality and this adult reality coupulate with new ideas to restart the process of birth of new reality. This is the life cycle of knowledge. And in this life cycle the most fertile thing is idea. If we have continuing ideas we have continuing knowledge. If we lack ideas we lack knowledge.
Where do these new ideas come from? They come from.thinking. Thinking-or thought process steer our consciousness. Churning of thoughts results into ideas. The more we churn our thoughts , the more se get new ideas. This requires unhindered freedom in our mind, so our mind can freely and wildy exercise to find new and new ideas. All ideas don't result into knowledge. Only those which have soul can enter into the life cycle of knowledge. But for one viable dea we have to produce a lot of ideas.
This process of continuing and lively knowledge needs freedom. Only freedom ensures the continuos birth of more and more knowledge. If though process is regimented to think only in a particular way number of ideas are restricted, and they become unilateral. They lose their variety resulting into production and growth of same species of knowledge. With the passage of time because they fail to live up the evolutionary needs of knowladge fail to survive and ultimately are doomed. History presents plenty of such examples.
When we go back to history we find when human minds had have more freedom more knowledge was created. This is true universally. Those kings or kingdoms or empires or democracies which nurtured free thinking were enriched by more varied knowledge. Here we find the role of political system in the construction of knowledge. Although I'm.not going to pick evey example from.history books I'm presenting only three from the modern world and these are the French Revolution, the Second World War and the age of Cold War. During all these events those become victorious who went for free thinking.
We start from.the Cold War which culminated with the disintegration of the USSR. The USSR was a closed society and so a unilateral society where only a particular type of thought process was allowed. The USA , in contrast gave place to all sorts for thinking and so the USA could have more robust knowledge ecosystem resulting into its victory over the USSR and the latter became extinct without actually fighting war with the former in a battle ground. Same thing happened with Nazi Germany which madness for unilateral thought process resulted into its crushing defeat in the Second World War. After the French Revolution those societies which adopted it's underlying principles could dominate the world for about two centuries. In India we can compare the regimes of the Mauryas and the Guptas with those of Rajput Kingdoms , and regimes of hardliner Muslims rulers. Even we can defferentiate the progress made under Akbar and Aurangzeb. These few and those innumerable lessons from past history and contemporary world establish the golden rule that greater is the thinking freedom , grater is the advancement in the knowledge.
Here we spot the role of politics and education . Education system is largely controlled and affected by the government of the day. Almost entire aspect of education system is determined and controlled by the government , no matter it's private or public. So it's natural that the government of the day tries to influence the ideas behind knowledge. And in many cases governments tend to fix certain ideas in the minds of knowledge seekers, such ideas are not originally originating from the independent thought process of the knowledge seekers , rather they are installed. Installed ideas are in most of the cases bound to produce pre programmed knowledge. Although governments genuinely need to influence ideas in many cases, under certain circumstances such efforts , willingly or unwillingly cross the limit and try to impose ideas of one on all. They are prevented to go for free thinking by various means which may be punitive or alluring. In some cases other ideas are branded as unreal or injurious or incorrect or anything else which suits to the governments. Evaluation system is another very powerful tool. Ideas not suited may be declared wrong or incorrect by the system of evaluation. This ultimately affect the finance of the knowledge seekers and in the result the knowledge seekers may be forced to give up their ideas in the interest of their economics. This phenomenon is omnipresent but the problem for a civilization starts when the problem is acute.
When a political or social system gives liberty to a considerable extent to its members to experiment with their ideas knowledge thrive, in consequence of which new thoughts, new inventions , new discoveries take birth. But when only one idea is enforced free thinking is restricted which results into stagnation . Then civilizations suffer from inertia and ultimately decline. So if we have to move forward we will have to nurture free thinking, new ideas, experiment with ideas and resultant knowledge. A vibrant society has its own mechanism to grow but it needs freedom for thinking. Such societies are capable of coping with such new ideas which may be injurious to their health. But those ideas which may come from minority section succeds provided they are in the larger interest of the society. French revolution and our own Freedom Struggle are vey suitable examples which began with minority and ultimately became mass idea. Similarly many scholars have been punished in their life time for their free thinking but ultimately their ideas have been accepted by mass. So we need a democracy which inherently encourage free thinking and this ultimately leads to continuous growth of knowladge.