Art - The Path To Knowledge

Book excerpt: A university must produce and organize knowledge. Indeed, this fact does not seem to suffer disputes. However, what is the knowledge that a university produces and disseminates? In this short essay, which serves as a conceptual basis for a wide-ranging epistemological discussion, the authors propose questions about knowledge, whose answers have been sought by the contemporary academy. However, the research is more focused on questions than on answers. The important thing is to ask the right questions. We invite the members of the academic community to participate in this theoretical reflection on knowledge, in order to support our research activities, extension, teaching and graduate studies. The growing and unstable transformations the world has been going through are reflected directly in production, recording and distribution of knowledge, not to mention the value changes that the traditional knowledge has suffered, as it is hastily abandoned by unfounded news. Revisiting the concepts that form the bases of our science serves to verify their validity, effectiveness and socioeconomic, political and cultural importance. Courage to re-examine openly the beliefs that we embrace in the practice of our sciences is the virtue that defines, par excellence, the academic researcher. “If Biology can save the humans and the Earth, the arts can save the soul...” (Luiz Fernando Pereira) “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.” A. Einstein.