Summary:
What is gaining knowledge? The meaning of knowledge, the importance of general knowledge and knowledge management
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” ― Albert Einstein
Gaining knowledge is immensely helpful in managing and growing our personal and professional life. It makes us efficient and thereby effective. A knowledgeable person is always viewed respectfully in society. A well-read or knowledgeable person is considered to be an expert, providing valuable advice or suggestions.
Because of this, students should always be eager to learn more. But knowledge must also be accompanied by wisdom. Just mugging up or reading and learning about something is not sufficient. Students also need to understand how to use what they have learned wisely and successfully to improve and ease their own lives.
So, what is knowledge? It is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, like realities, info, descriptions, or skills, which may be acquired through experience or education by viewing, discovering, or learning. Knowledge is a useful theoretical understanding of a topic.
Through knowledge follow actions. There are many types of actions but their differences are not something universally accepted. There is a lot of philosophical disagreement over creating a “master list”.
However, Here Are 5 Different Types of Knowledge
1. A Priori
This form of knowledge is also known as prior knowledge and depends on what a person can understand from the world without needing to experience it. This is better known as reasoning. With the use of this type of knowledge, students can compute the sum of 4 + 6 without having to look for a lot of additional items.
2. A Posteriori
This is another type of knowledge that uses inductive reasoning to gain knowledge. This form of knowledge is gained by first having experience. You as a student can then employ reasoning and reflection to comprehend it better. It is worth noting that a priori knowledge is more reliable than posterior knowledge. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, and though the latter is experiencing something, it is also subjective and open for interpretation. In other words, nothing is concrete and hence the difficulty in setting the types of knowledge.
3. Explicit Knowledge
It can be observed that types of knowledge tend to come in pairs and are typically antitheses of each other. This form of knowledge is recorded and communicated through mediums. It can be anything from science to arts. It’s the type of information that you learn as a student through books or websites. It is the kind of knowledge that is universally accepted as it has been proved. F=MA or force equals mass into acceleration is a globally accepted explicit form of knowledge.
4. Tacit Knowledge
This form of knowledge is opposite to explicit knowledge in that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to communicate tacit knowledge through any medium. For instance, a book on Chinese history can provide information to students right away, but a professional musician or artist cannot teach someone how to paint or play an instrument and expect them to immediately be proficient in the skill. In other words, this form of knowledge will require the individual to experience it to learn and understand it.
5. Descriptive Knowledge
This is a form of knowledge that can literally be expressed in declarative sentences or propositions. It is very similar to a priori and explicit knowledge. The key feature is about knowing that something is true. The best example of this would be mathematical equations. In other words, it is a knowledge of something rather than knowledge of doing something.
6. Procedural Knowledge
This form of knowledge is like its name and occurs like a procedure. As a student, you acquire knowledge gradually. For example, it is using a textbook/manual/instructional pamphlet on how to cook a particular dish. Unlike Descriptive Knowledge, which is only about knowing something, you’ll need to read or memorise the entire procedure to know all the steps of cooking the dish.
In addition, as a student, you can state these procedures to another person in the form of declarative phrases. Thus, no matter what type of knowledge it is, it’s always valuable. Meanwhile, one can use conventional and non-conventional methods to gain knowledge. All one needs is access to knowledge.
