Replying to LO30564 --
Dear Organlearners,
Greetings to all of you. I had to link this essay to one of the messages
on the topic. I selected Mark McElroy's Knowledge and Information LO30564
since i have already replied to it in depth. This is not another reply to
it and Mark need not to reply to this essay.
I think that i must tell about my own evolution in distinguishing between
knowledge and evolution. Perhaps it may explain to fellow learners why i
now make such a distinction. It is not intended to justify this
distinction because in any case it cannot do so. I think that this can
only be done by profoundly critical thinking.
The shortest manner to distinguish between them is to say that knowledge
*lives #within the mind while information *exists #outside it. Compare *
with * and # with # to take the first step in finding the difference.
Please, do not demand that the first step should incorporate all the
successive steps.
At school i was ignorant to any distinction between them. That was more
than fourty years ago in a suburban community which was not particularly
sensitive to systematical thinking. At university i began to notice a
difference in using knowledge="kennis" and information="inligting". The
words in quotes are the equivalents in my mother tongue Afrikaans.
I was enrolled for a degree in the faculty of science. All our lectures
were done in Afrikaans. Our lecturers made considerable effort to provide
us with information sources in Afrikaans. When referring to a particular
document with something wrong or false in it, they would always say "This
information is wrong or false" and never "This knowledge is wrong or
false".
The reason why i use both "wrong" and "false" is interesting. Scientific
information has to be presented according to certain conventions, each
subject having its own conventions. When information is not presented
according to the conventions, it is wrong, but may still be true. On the
other hand, although it can be presented according to the conventions, it
may be empirically false.
However, when lecturers referred to the entire collection of information
sources on a subject like physics or chemistry regardless of which sources
had actually been studied, they referred to it as the knowledge on
chemistry or physics. I followed the same practice during my four years of
post graduate research on soil science, not knowing anything for better or
worse.
But when i became a teacher of natural sciences in 1972, i began to avoid
using the name knowledge for any and even for all sources of information
on a subject belonging to natural science. I began to articulate to pupils
that they need knowledge inside their mind to make sense out of external
documents with scientific information. I tried to guide them how to
develop such inner knowledge using their natural creativity and exposing
them to lots of experiments (experiences).
What i did not realise then that i was actually avoiding making a
categorical distinction between knowledge and information. I was not
aware, or perhaps only tacitly aware, of the reason why. This state of
affairs continued when i became a lecturer of teachers who wanted a
further training in chemistry. It even was even the case for my first year
or two of teaching at the university of Pretoria.
But since the eighties i began to avoid deliberately using the name
knowledge for any source or even all sources of information on chemistry.
By that time i became aware that sources of information on subjects in the
humanities did not have such a distinction as in subjects of the natural
sciences. I was aware of it, but i did not tell it. Even after having
studied Michael Polyani's "The Tacit Dimension" which had a profound
influence on my own thinking on learning and knowledge, i was still not
aware why i was avoiding the articulation of my tacit knowing on the
difference between knowledge and information.
However, my participation since eight years ago in the Bible study group
of our parish changed me gradually. I was (and still am) the only one
capable of making some meagre sense out of the New Testament (NT) in its
original Greek text. It took me twenty years of self-instruction to do so.
We found many differences between the first and second authorised
translations of the Bible in Afrikaans. We began to collect many other
translations of the Bible into English, German and Dutch, depending on
those who could comprehend translations into these languages.
We discovered that when the 1st and 2nd translations in Afrikaans made by
experts deviated, it would usually happen in these many translations into
other languages too. I began to depend increasingly on my dictionaries of
the Koine Greek used in the NT as well as Helenistic Greek in general.
Thus i began to realise how important it is to understand the successive
cultures during biblical times which provided the metaphores for
communication. We all came deeply under the impression that it requires
far more than merely a translation of the Bible into Afrikaans to
understand what each verse means.
About five years ago i became aware why I avoided making a distinction
between knowledge and information. I belong to the reformed, protestant
branch of the Christian church. It confesses very clearly and emphatically
that the Bible is the only and sufficient of source of specific knowledge
on God. It was the very reason why this branch bifurcated from the Roman
Catholic Church. So my difficult journey on making sure what the Bible is
-- a source of knowledge or a source of information -- began.
For me to claim that the Bible contains information on God, but no
knowledge, might be as far reaching as Luther's 95 theses on the church
door of Gutenberg. For example, should the Bible contained knowledge, then
why do we need the Holy Spirit in guiding us to understand it?
I was extremely fortunate in that our Bible study group began to function
as a "tacit LO" (tacit Learning Organisation) about five years ago. By
"tacit" i mean that nobody else than me in the gropu know of Senge's
articulations of a LO in his seminal Fifth Discipline. The tacit operation
of the five disciplines in this group would show me whether I was on a Don
Quixote course or not. One by one the other members of the group began to
make the same distinction as me while i avoided coercing them in any way
to do so.
About three years ago i became deeply under the impression that i will
have to study the History of Uncovering the Act of (individual) Learning
once again. I reported the outcome of this study in a series of essays to
the LO community on this list-server. My own purpose was to make sure that
my own evolution in the distinction between knowledge and information is
not contrary to the authentic learning of humans.
In this I was often reminded of Copernicus. He did not merely substituted
the geocentric description of our solar system with the heliocentric one.
He also carefully showed how the evolution of this distinction had been at
work since the ancient Greeks. His "sacred fury" to get at the truth was
an immense crutch for me to lean upon. I often wonder how much fellow
learners appreciate what Copernicus did and in what depth to let medieval
thinking emerge into modern thinking.
Christians usually confess that the Bible is the Word of God, using
several verses from the Bible itself to substantiate it. I have no problem
with it and even believe the same. But going one step further in claiming
that the Word of God is knowledge rather than information is now too much
for me. We can only digest the information in the Word of God by having
Godly knowledge. Such knowledge emerges within us only when experiencing
what God commands us to do -- serve each others with deeds of love,
unconditional and compassionate. Never judge others because only God can
do it.
Today i am ready to tackle like a Don Quixote any windmill standing in my
way to distinguish between knowledge and information. Sanches might have
shaken his head at my curious imaginations and comical actions. But i
cannot act in any other way. Even more, i think that the intensity of the
information explosion has reached such a high level that this distinction
has become imperative not to fall victim to its pathology. I have written
recently on this pathology too.
Do i now have peace in making formally this distinction between knowledge
and information? Yes, but i also know that in my religious culture of
reformed protestantism i will still have to defend myself against past
paradigms and mental models. This feels like climbing up a high mountain.
Does this distinction help me in guiding other to learn as individuals and
in organisational relationships? Yes, because articulated information is
still the prime manner by which every person can share his/her knowledge
with another person. This is what makes us humans different to other
mammals.
I should have written that information exsists PRIMARILY outside the mind.
I now do so for the following reason. We can memorise a parcel of
information without actually digesting it so that it become integrated
with our knowledge. Thus it can exist in the mind, but it still does not
live as knowledge does. I think that such parcels of information is the
primary cause for rigid mental models.
The biggest delusion we have to bear in mind is that computer applications
(IT -- Information Technology) have the capacity to deal with information
and thus may appear to be a source of knowledge. But they can only do what
knowledgeable humans have programmed them to do. In other words, they
depend on the knowledge of humans for their capacity to act, for better or
worse. In themselves they have no capacity at all to act effectively. When
computers are capable of self-organising without human intervention, i
will examine my thesis once again.
The distiction between knowledge and information is vital to understand
the difference between Individual Learning (IL) and Organisational
Learning (OL). In IL past articulations of information are not essential
to it. But in OL humans learn together as much as they learn as
individuals. It is characteristic of the associativity pattern of
wholeness:-
knowledge of A * information * knowledge of B
To put it in other words, I cannot keep on learning without you telling me
what you have learned. This social dimension of learning fills me with awe
-- I am nothing without you and the information communicated between us.
I think that its because of this associtive pattern of wholeness above
that knowledge="kennis" has no plural. I have knowledge and you have
knowledge which differ, but together we do not have knowledges since we
can talk to each other.
My mother tongue Afrikaans is very creative. When we make the plural
"kennisse", it then refers to the people we know personally.
Why do we not have a plural for information="inligting"? I do not know.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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