Knowledge by Fred Bauder
From Wikinfo
This is a signed article by User:Fred Bauder. It may be edited for spelling errors or typos, but not for substantive content except by its author. If you have created a user name and verified your identity, provided you have set forth your credentials on your user page, you can add comments to the bottom of this article as Wikinfo:Peer review.
See also Knowledge
Knowledge includes, but is not limited to, those descriptions, hypotheses, concepts, theories, principles and procedures which to a reasonable degree of certainty are either true or useful.
Knowledge consists of beliefs about reality. One way of deriving and verifying knowledge is from tradition or from generally recognized authorities of the past, such as Aristotle. Knowledge may also be based upon the pronouncements of secular or religious authority such as the state or the church. A second way to derive knowledge is by observation and experiment: the scientific method. Knowledge may also be derived by reason from either traditional, authoritative, or scientific sources or a combination of them and may or may not be verified by resort to observation and testing.
Knowledge may be factual or inferential. Factual knowledge is based on direct observation. It is still not free of uncertainty, as errors of observation or interpretation may occur, and any sense can be deceived by illusions. Inferential knowledge is based on reasoning from facts or from other inferential knowledge such as a theory. Such knowledge may or may not be verifiable by observation or testing. For example, all knowledge of the atom is inferential knowledge, a theoretical construct. The distinction between factual knowledge and inferential knowledge has been explored by the discipline of general semantics.
Roger Bacon, an English alchemist and philosopher of the high middle ages, had this to say about knowledge: "Of the three ways in which men think that they acquire knowledge of things - authority, reasoning, and experience - only the last is effective and able to bring peace to the intellect." Thus knowledge might arise from authority, logic, or experience. Earlier divine revelation by the grace of God was contrasted by the early Christian church with knowledge gained by reason such as practiced by classical philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Experimental knowledge was discounted, for example, by St. Augustine.
