- What is knowledge?
- Knowledge elements
- Types of knowledge
- Theory of knowledge
- Knowledge society
- Knowledge management
We explain what knowledge is, what elements make it possible and what types exist. Also, the theory of knowledge.
What is knowledge?
It is extremely difficult to define knowledge or establish its conceptual limits. Most of the approaches to what it is, always depend on the philosophical and theoretical perspective that one has, since there is knowledge related to all branches of human knowledge, and also to all areas of experience.
Even knowledge itself serves as a subject of study: the branch of philosophy who studies it is known as Theory of knowledge.
Commonly, we understand by knowledge the mental, cultural and even emotional process, through which reality is reflected and reproduced in the thought, from various types of experiences, reasonings Y learnings. This concept may include one or more of the following elements:
- Facts or information that learned by someone and understood through experience, the education, theoretical or experimental reflection.
- The totality of the intellectual content and of the knowledge that is had regarding a specific field of the reality.
- The familiarity and awareness that is obtained regarding a specific event, after having experienced it.
- Everything that can be thought using the questions "how?", "When?", "Where?" and because?".
Knowledge elements
Four elements of knowledge are usually recognized, which are those that intervene in the acquisition or formulation of any kind of knowledge:
- Subject. All knowledge is acquired by a subject, that is, it is part of the mental or intellectual baggage of an individual.
- Object. Objects are all recognizable elements of reality, which serve the subject to form knowledge, that is, to formulate ideas, understand relationships, make thoughts. The subject alone, isolated from everything and everyone, cannot obtain knowledge.
- Cognitive operation. It is a complex neurophysiological process, which allows to establish the subject's thinking around the object, that is, it allows the interaction between subject and object and its intellectual formulation in knowledge.
- Thought. Thought is difficult to define, but in this area we can understand it as the psychic “trace” that the cognitive process leaves on the subject regarding his experience with the object. It is a mental representation of the object, inserted in a network of mental relationships and that allow the existence of knowledge as such.
Types of knowledge
There are many ways of classifying knowledge, according to your specific area of knowledge (for example: medical knowledge, chemicals, biological, mathematicians, artistic, etc.), or its nature and the way it was acquired. According to the latter, we would have:
- Theoretical knowledge. Those that come from an interpretation of reality or from the experiences of third parties, that is, indirectly, or through conceptual mediations such as books, documents, films, explanations, etc. Of this type are scientific knowledge, philosophical and even beliefs religious.
- Empirical insights. It is about those that we obtain directly, from our experience of the universe and the memories that we have left of her.This type of knowledge constitutes the basic framework of "rules" about how the world operates, which in some cases can become non-transferable, such as spatial, abstract and knowledge related to perceptions.
- Practical knowledge. These are those that allow to obtain an end or perform a specific action, or that serve to model the conduct. They are usually learned by imitation or theoretically, but can only really be incorporated when they are put into practice. It is the case of technical knowledge, ethical or politicians.
Finally, one can also speak of formal knowledge: those that come from the course of an institution of teaching, such as school, university, etc .; and informal knowledge: those that are acquired on the fly, in the life, without involving a particular teaching dynamic.
Theory of knowledge
The Theory of Knowledge is one of the branches of philosophy, which focuses on the study of human knowledge, in its different meanings. Depending on the academic perspective of the study, the Theory of Knowledge can be considered as a synonymous gnoseology or epistemology.
In the first case, the very nature of knowledge is studied: its origin, its limits, etc .; while in the second case the historical, psychological or sociological circumstances that define the obtaining of knowledge are studied, as well as the strategies used to validate knowledge or, conversely, to invalidate it.
Knowledge society
The term "Knowledge Society" arose from the tremendous cultural impact that the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in contemporary human culture, formulated by Austrian Peter Drucker.
Knowledge Societies are those that incorporate ICT and all its hypercommunicative potential to the daily life of the social relationships, cultural and economic of its community. This facilitates new schemes of communication total, which overcome the barriers of weather and the space.
However, this term should not be confused with that of Society of Information, since the latter is just an instrument of knowledge, composed of facts and events. In other words, it does not necessarily cover the interpretation and understanding of the information by the persons.
An information society is only one that allows information exchange, while a knowledge society is one that uses information to transform its social, economic and cultural reality in pursuit of a model of sustainable development.
Knowledge management
This concept comes from the English Knowledge management, and is of daily use in the world of Business Y organizations. Knowledge management is understood to be the specific way of managing information and knowledge resources.
Its objective is that specialized knowledge is transferred to the place where it will be used or put into practice, that is, that it does not remain only in the place where it is generated.
This organizational perspective has the advantage of understanding knowledge as one of the most valuable assets of an organization. Therefore, it proposes its dissemination as a way to promote the development of business skills.
Consequently, as knowledge flows, it generates new structures of knowing and brings new powers to the organization. For this reason, knowledge must be managed based on tactical, operational and strategic precepts within a given company.