We explain what the theory of knowledge is within philosophy. Also, what is knowledge and its different definitions.
What is the Theory of knowledge?
The Theory of Knowledge is a branch of the philosophy, focused on the study of human knowledge. Depending on the specific academic perspective, this term can be considered synonymous of gnoseology, dedicated to the study of the nature of knowledge, its origin and its limits.
In other cases it can be used as a synonym to theepistemology, which focuses on the study of the historical, psychological or sociological circumstances in which knowledge is obtained, as well as the strategies used to justify or invalidate it.
Human knowledge is a subject approachable from many possible sides and whose nature is difficult to grasp, although much easier to classify. In this way, the study of knowledge, on the one hand, reflects on its characteristics and its conditions of appearance.
On the other hand, this discipline orders knowledge based on its limitations, formal requirements or mechanisms that we use to validate them and differentiate knowledge from faith, fantasy or error.
Thus, it is possible to speak of scientific knowledge, for example, when it is governed by the demands of the scientific method; of knowledge theological, when it comes to knowledge about religion; of knowledge artistic, when it is acquired through the exercise of talent and the representation mechanisms known to the human being.
The possibility of distinguishing between them, of ordering and schematizing them as if they were concrete objects, is the result of the Theory of knowledge.
What is knowledge?
Generally, by knowledge we mean:
- Facts or information that a person acquires through experience or through education, and thanks to whose understanding he is able to refer to a certain matter of the reality.
- The intellectual content that a person can accumulate regarding an area of knowledge, specific topic or the entire universe.
- All kinds of cognitive certainty that answers the questions what? How? When? and where?
The very definition of what knowledge is, is already part of knowledge and therefore of the disciplines who study it.
Certain forms of knowledge have been more valued than others in each era of the history, as was the religious in medieval Europe, or as the scientist is today post-industrial. However, the underlying philosophical question of what knowledge is continues to challenge us and give us much to think about.