Knowledge is power

Knowledge is power is a winged German word that goes back to the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626). In his works, Bacon laid a cornerstone of philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment and introduced the Aristotelian-Christian scholasticism to the knowledge and methods of natural science . His endeavor to bring people "to a higher level of existence" was expressed in his Meditationes sacrae in 1597 in the formulation Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (because science itself is power), often shortened to scientia potestas est . In the English version of 1598 the sentence read:

"(For) knowledge (itself) is power"

"Because knowledge itself is power "

Bacon developed this idea further in his major work Novum Organum , published in 1620 . There he writes:

"Scientia et potentia humana in idem coincidunt, quia ignoratio causae destituit effectum"

"Knowledge and human power coincide because ignorance of the cause [also] deceives about its effect"

In the English-speaking world, the expression Knowledge is power became widespread. Benjamin Rush described it as a well-known aphorism in a letter written in 1806 .

In Germany, Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) took up Bacon's formulation in a lecture one year after the founding of the nation state in the form of the German Empire in 1872:

"Knowledge is power - power is knowledge"

Liebknecht, one of the founding fathers of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), advocated the demand that the working class should gain political power and remove existing barriers that denied large sections of the population access to knowledge, education and culture. The slogan became very popular within the labor movement. In 1891 Max Kegel used it in the text of the song Socialist March :

"The light of the spirit, the power of knowledge,
be it given to the whole people!"

At the beginning of the 20th century, the expression, with the reference to bacon, was already found in German-language conversation lexicons .

Since the 1970s, the saying in German is youth language , first as a slogan of Sponti movement (see. Sponti sayings of unknown authorship in various forms) satirizes . This is how the slogan knowledge is power is found, I don't know anything, never mind. - even in the variants knowledge is power. We don't know anything. Never mind. or knowledge is power, knowing nothing does not matter. in graffiti and other scene-specific forms of expression in various modern subcultural youth movements and countercultures that contradict elite- oriented social designs .