Replying to LO30580 --
Dear Organlearners,
Leo Minnigh <minnigh@dds.nl> wrote:
>The dialogue on information and knowledge is regular returning
>subject on this list. I have thought how to create a soil for breeding
>new thoughts on this subject.
Greetings dear Leo,
This is wise. Thank you. The more thoughts we take in consideration, the
closer we will get to the real difference between knowledge and
information.
One thought keeps on pestering me -- the relationship between knowledge
and information must be very close to cause so much confusion what each
amounts to.
>I am very pleased if we could start with this sort of exploration,
>because I am not font of definitions. Definitions are based on
>the idea that this world could be divided and ordered in strict
>categories, as if twilight zones between the categories do not exist.
I am also not fond of definitions. I find them as obstacles in the
evolution of thinking. A definition acts like the Big Bang -- before it
there was nothing. This is not the case. There was reasons for creating a
definition and to me these reasons are as important as the definition
itself.
If you fellow learners really want to enjoy how futile definitions can be,
use Google's advance search engine and type in the second window
defintion of knowledge
You will get thousands of hits. From them you can easily collect more
than a hundred different definitions of knowledge. Do it for information
and you will get similar results.
Yet we can learn something very important from the futility to define
knowledge (or information). It must be very complex to allow for so
many different definitions of it. I think that we should always bear this in
mind and not try to simplify things as you have warned.
>Two brain activities seem important during thinking:
>1) making choices; 2) making connections.
I agree. My reason is that both have to do with the bifurcative (forking,
splitting) activity of knowledge. To make an intelligent choice (i.e., not
to gamble) i first have to experience a mental bifurcation to realise
which of the paths to choose. To make an intelligent connection i intend
to create such a bifurcation from which something novel may emerge.
But is knowledge merely about cognitive bifurcations? No, it is also the
capacity to digest information so that it can grow.
>Perhaps there are others who could sketch another distant view
>on this subject. Another perspective will help to increase our
>understandings.
Leo, there are so many things we have to bear in mind like learning,
perception, consciousness and creativity. For me they are part and parcel
of knowledge. It is especially the 7Es (seven essentialities of
creativity) which helped me to understand more of knowledge and
information.
For example, wholeness is one of the 7Es. As for myself, i can definitely
say that my knowledge has much more wholeness than the parcels of
information which i had to digest. But i worked hard to increase this
wholeness of my knowledge since an insight which i got in 1964 while
studying physical chemistry. Furthermore, as a teacher i tried to
encourage also my students to increase the wholeness of their knowledge.
But this did not happen as frequently as i wish it would. Some students
just could not understand why their knowledge had to have more wholeness.
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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