Knowledge

Knowledge is the synthetic whole of the information available in the mind, individual or collective. The knowledge then help to have wisdom. However, the knowledge can be altogether lost in information, and wisdom can be lost in knowledge, as T S Eliot has suggested:

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

To know is to perceive something through our sense organs. Therefore, our knowing is heavily depended on the perfectness of our sense organs, the track of its transmission and the mind that processes any information sent to it.

It is a natural deduction that whatever we know is knowledge. This knowledge may be true or untrue depends on what the information reached the mind.

Verification of our knowledge being true is most of the time done by comparing our knowledge with the knowledge of others, who we believe to be healthy of both the body and mind.

However, problem arises when a person of better health happen to know something but others having worse health of their body and mind form majority to contradict the better knowing person on the basis of their poor knowledge of the things.

This comparison fails at this point to give us clear picture of truthfulness of a knowledge perceived by a person. It then needs explanation or logic from the better knowing person so that people may believe him. This triggers developments in the field of knowledge.

The knowledge can be acquired by only two process - through direct experience or through speculation.

Whatever we know through direct experience is called Empirical knowledge, and whatever we know through exercising our mind is Speculative knowledge.

Limitation

The first limitation of the knowledge is our limited numbers of sense organs. The second is the limited capacity of our sense organs, the transmision tracks and the mind themselves. This produces a doubt that whatever we know might be untrue.

For example, even if the whole world agree to a statement that 'this is a red rose', it can be untrue. For we know that we see the rays that is reflected by the objects. Therefore, only this much is true that the rose is reflecing red coloured rays.

We are unsure what colour the rose truely might have contained. Let us begin the journey for knowledge with this doubt that whatever we know might be untrue.

Nevertheless, all the branches of knowledge can be categorised in five major categories - Time, Universe, Matter, Life and Energy.

Nearby pages
Knute Rockne, Ko Hung, Kobdo, Kobena Eyi Acquah, Koch