Outline of Knowledge
Knowledge is making the right choice with all the information.
Wisdom is making the right choice without all the information.
Types of knowledge
By form
- A priori and a posteriori knowledge-- these terms are used with respect to reasoning (epistemology) to distinguish necessary conclusions from first premises...
- A prioriknowledge or justification -- knowledge that is independent of experience, as with mathematics(3+2=5), tautologies("All bachelors are unmarried"), and deduction from pure reason(e.g., ontological proofs).
- A posterioriknowledge or justification -- knowledge dependent on experience or empirical evidence, as with most aspects of science and personal knowledge.
- Descriptive knowledge-- also called declarative knowledge or propositional knowledge, it is the type of knowledge that is, by its very nature, expressed in declarative sentences or indicative propositions (e.g., "Albert is fat", or "It is raining"). This is distinguished from what is commonly known as "know-how" or procedural knowledge (the knowledge of how, and especially how best, to perform some task), and "knowing of", or knowledge by acquaintance (the knowledge of something's existence).
- Experience-- knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it.
- Empirical evidence-- also referred to as empirical data, empirical knowledge, and sense experience, it is a collective term for the knowledge or source of knowledge acquired by means of the senses, particularly by observation and experimentation.After Immanuel Kant, it is common in philosophy to call the knowledge thus gaineda posterioriknowledge. This is contrasted witha prioriknowledge, the knowledge accessible from pure reason alone.
- Experiential knowledge--
- Explicit knowledge-- knowledge that can be readily articulated, codified, accessed and verbalized.It can be easily transmitted to others. Most forms of explicit knowledge can be stored in certain media. The information contained in encyclopedias and textbooks are good examples of explicit knowledge.
- Extelligence-- term coined by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen in their 1997 book Figments of Reality. They define it as the cultural capital that is available to us in the form of external media (e.g. tribal legends, folklore, nursery rhymes, books, videotapes, CD-ROMs, etc.).
- Knowledge by acquaintance-- according to Bertrand Russell, knowledge by acquaintance is obtained through a direct causal (experience-based) interaction between a person and the object that person is perceiving. Sense-data from that object are the only things that people can ever become acquainted with; they can never truly KNOW the physical object itself. The distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge by description" was promoted by Russell (notably in his 1905 paper On Denoting). Russell was extremely critical of the equivocal nature of the word "know", and believed that the equivocation arose from a failure to distinguish between the two fundamentally different types of knowledge.
- Libre knowledge-- knowledge released in such a way that users are free to read, listen to, watch, or otherwise experience it; to learn from or with it; to copy, adapt and use it for any purpose; and to share the work (unchanged or modified). Whilst shared tacit knowledge is regarded as implicitly libre, (explicit) libre knowledge is defined as a generalisation of the libre software definition.
- Procedural knowledge-- also known as imperative knowledge, it is the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task. Commonly referred to as "knowing-how" and opposed to "knowing-that" (descriptive knowledge).
- Tacit knowledge-- kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. For example, that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient. However, the ability to speak a language, knead dough, play a musical instrument or design and use complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge that is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to explicitly transfer to other users.
By scope
- Common knowledge-- knowledge that is known by everyone or nearly everyone, usually with reference to the community in which the term is used.
- Customer knowledge-- knowledge for, about, or from customers.
- Domain knowledge-- valid knowledge used to refer to an area of human endeavour, an autonomous computer activity, or other specialized discipline.
- General knowledge-- "culturally valued knowledge communicated by a range of non-specialist media" and encompassing a wide subject range.This definition excludes highly specialized learning that can only be obtained with extensive training and information confined to a single medium. General knowledge is an important component of crystallized intelligence and is strongly associated with general intelligence, and with openness to experience.
- Metaknowledge-- knowledge about knowledge.Bibliographies are a form of metaknowledge. Patterns within scientific literature is another.
- Mutual knowledge--
- Self-knowledge-- information that an individual draws upon when finding an answer to the question "What am I like?".
- Traditional knowledge-- knowledge systems embedded in the cultural traditions of regional, indigenous, or local communities. Traditional knowledge includes types of knowledge about traditional technologies of subsistence (e.g. tools and techniques for hunting or agriculture), midwifery, ethnobotany and ecological knowledge, traditional medicine, celestial navigation, ethnoastronomy, the climate, and others. These kinds of knowledge, crucial for subsistence and survival, are generally based on accumulations of empirical observation and on interaction with the environment.
- Traditional ecological knowledge