Knowledge? Argument!

In his years in prison, Charlie Redtail had read much and he thought it a humorous irony that he should educate himself only to be put to death. But life was an irony. A paradox. One lived, one learned, and at the peak of one's knowledge, one died. It should be the other way around, he thought. Indeed, it was the other way around. The child was born with all knowledge, and it became one's life's work to discover the knowledge born within.
He read the books in the prison library, those on philosophy and politics. History books and books on sociology. He had learned that what most called knowledge was argument. Even the scientists couldn't agree on most things. The politicians and religious writers were bent by their politics and their religions and could not give straight answers.
Gerry Spence: Half-Moon and Empty Stars