JAMES FREDERICK FERRIER

James Frederick Ferrier (born 216 years ago / died 160 years ago) was a Scottish word-user, writer, lawyer, and university professor. His wife Margaret Anne Wilson wrote under the pseudonym Christopher North.

At a time when the word-user population of 1 billion (versus 9 billion today) believed everything known is in a book of more knowledge than can be known, also known as Bible, James Frederick Ferrier discovered epistemology and agnoiology — Greek English pronounced, meaning knowledge-science and ignorance-science respectively.

While Ferrier believed he was a scientist, he believed consciousness is the distinctive feature of word-users. But he didn’t use his being a scientist to scientifically study the wordless energy, gravity, fire, air, earth, water, electricity, magnets, cells, plants, and wordless animals. Else he would have known the wordless are infinitely more conscious than the word-users will ever know.

He also believed the perception of matter is the ultimate proof of thought. But he ignored that words possess no matter and therefore defy our understanding of how the universe works. He didn’t know because the knowledge required didn’t exist when James Frederick Ferrier walked the Earth. Some word-users born after James Frederick Ferrier now describe his method as Spinoza’s — strict demonstration or at least an attempt at it. But like James Frederick Ferrier, they don’t see words for what they are — a word by any other word.

TAKEAWAY

James Frederick Ferrier is famous for a quote that reads:

“Consciousness is manifest only when the man has used the word with full knowledge of what it means.”

Corrected for the fact consciousness is a word, the quote reads:

“Consciousness exists whether the word-user knows or ignores what it means.”

#ConsciousnessAndKnowledge #education #personaldevelopment #word