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| '''Knowledge,''' is, on one common [[philosophy|philosophical]] account, [[justification|justified]], and [[truth|true]] [[belief]]. However, "knowledge" is very often used in a looser way to refer to any form of truth or belief, a whole body of truth or a whole system of belief. For "knowledge" in this latter sense, see [[world view]], [[ideology]], and [[religion]].
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| In a more restricted and philosophical sense, knowledge is the central topic of the philosophical subdiscipline of [[epistemology]]. A good place to begin with this topic is by explaining why most philosophers do distinguish between knowledge on one hand and both truth and belief on the other hand.
| | '''Knowledge''' is the central topic of the [[philosophy|philosophical]] subdiscipline of [[epistemology]]. A good place to begin with this topic is by explaining why most philosophers do distinguish between knowledge on one hand and both [[truth]] and [[belief]] on the other hand. |
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| Firstly, knowledge is said to differ from truth for the simple reason that not all truths are known; in other words, there are undiscovered truths. Some people (including some philosophers) are apt to respond to this by asking, "What sort of thing is an undiscovered truth?" This is an [[ontology|ontological]] issue, however, and most of us will probably be satisfied if we simply give examples. For instance, the [[second law of thermodynamics]] was already true prior to its being formulated in the 19th century. | | Firstly, knowledge is said to differ from truth for the simple reason that not all truths are known; in other words, there are undiscovered truths. Some people (including some philosophers) are apt to respond to this by asking, "What sort of thing is an undiscovered truth?" This is an [[ontology|ontological]] issue, however, and most of us will probably be satisfied if we simply give examples. For instance, the [[second law of thermodynamics]] was already true prior to its being discovered in the 19th century. |
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| Secondly, knowledge is said to differ from belief because we believe many things when we do not really know them.<ref>Some philosophers are even capable of saying that we can have knowledge of a fact without believing it. Cf. Colin Radford, "Knowledge--By Examples." (complete reference needed).</ref> | | Secondly, knowledge is said to differ from belief because we believe many things when we do not really know them.<ref>Some philosophers are even capable of saying that we can have knowledge of a fact without believing it. Cf. Colin Radford, "Knowledge--By Examples." (complete reference needed).</ref> |
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| ==To know==
| | However, 'knowledge' is very often used in a looser way to refer to any form of truth or belief, a whole body of truth or a whole system of belief. For "knowledge" in this latter sense, see [[world view]], [[ideology]], and [[religion]]. |
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| The word 'knowledge' abstracts, nominalizes, reifies what the verb 'to know' means. One approach to talking about knowledge, first talk about 'to know'...
| | ==Footnotes== |
| | | {{reflist|2}}[[Category:Suggestion Bot Tag]] |
| ==To be named==
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| Generally, knowledge refers to one's ability to generalize the experience in a compact form, to remember it and transfer it to others, while it also refers to the tools for such generalizing and transferring. In this sense, even the customs and semantics of human [[language]] can be considered as knowledge, while the same applies to all forms of [[art]] including [[literature]]. The more structured (restricted) knowledge forms are [[religion]]s, that follow the certain canons; this kind of knowledge (in the case of world religion) happens to be efficient in the organization of moral behavior of the members of religious societies and countries.
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| Even more structured are [[sciences]], which follow the certain rules (elaborated empirically during centuries, with numerous of probes and errors), that make them efficient especially in the prediction of phenomena.
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| ==Customs==
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| The category of customs should include not only commonly accepted human behavior, but also habitual semantics of commonly used human languages.
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| For example, the usual meaning of the Bible is custom, widely accepted in the Christian community.
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| The sentence {\em You shall love your neighbor as yourself} allows various interpretations, including the homosexual orientation of Jesus Christ, dependently on the meaning of the word [[love]] and its [[Hebrew]] and [[Aramaic]] equivalents. Similarly, the interpretations by [[Tim Rice]] and [[Michael Bulgakov]] should be qualified not as a custom but as an art.
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| The [[folklore]] also falls in the category of [[customs]], while it is sometimes difficult for the investigation by the systematic methods. However, if one collects the folklore texts or the records of country–music and publish, the folklor becomes literature, art.
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| The semantics of the human languages and their understanding - i.e. the meaning of words - is the most important part of human knowledge. Namely this kind of knowledge gives sense to other kinds of knowledge.
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| ==Arts==
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| Art is knowledge that is free from internal rules and is realized in a reproducible form that allow its systematic investigation, viewing, listening, performing, etc. Such a definition corresponds to a goal formulated in the introduction, although it slightly reduces the set of things which could be called art.
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| Usually a product of art has the following properties:
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| # Internationality. The music, images, movies, sculptures can be recognized as art regardless of the nationality of the spectators; even the text files often allow the translation into other languages.
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| #Beauty. The extensive ability of any unexpected use.
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| # Structureless. Intents to bring into the arts rules are not efficient. The arts use all other knowledges; the same product may have both artistic and scientific value.
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| # Wisdom. Artists with their works say more, than they planned to say, and more, than they understand by themselves. In this sense, the product of art may be wiser than the author.
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| # Entirety. Intents to correct, to improve a product of art destroy it.
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| # Amoralism. Creatures that have goal to bring some moral to the society, have low artistic value if at all; the creature may violate any taboo.
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| Aiming the specific application of the classification, the topics of customs and arts are presented here only declaratively.
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| ==Religions==
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| Religion is kind of the human knowledge based on some set of irrefutable concepts, beliefs, texts, symbols and performances specific for each religion.
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| Usually, any religion is characterized by most of following:
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| *Difficulty of translation. Some of religions are strongly entangled with the ethnicity and language. There some who believe that neither the Koran nor the Torah can be translated in a fully correct way.
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| *The existence of at least one God is presumed.
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| *There exist canonical sacred text, that allow the humans to guess the will of God(s) and follow it.
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| *God likes some human actions and those actions are called "Good".
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| *God dislike some human actions and those actions are called "Evil".
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| *The set of concepts presumes to play an organizing role in the society:
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| Religions use the word [[God]] as a generic term to denote an intelligent being that in some way, not available to humans, has abilities that greatly exceed those of a human. Each religion, in their own way, offers a unique set of moral values and rules to guide humans. Often, such rules are presumed to be truth without limits and alternatives.
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| Religions form a significant part of human knowledge and play an important role in human history. Religions which are tolerant with respect to other kinds of knowledge (in particular to other religions), may assist the proper development of the society.
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| ==Sciences==
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| After works by [[Karl Popper]], the term <i>science</i> can be defined in the restrictive way:
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| Science is a form of knowledge, activity and notations,
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| based on concepts that have all the six properties below:
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| '''S0.''' Applicability: Each concept has the limited range of validity, distinguishable from the empty set.
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| '''S1.''' Verifiability:
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| In the terms of the already accepted concepts, some specific experiment with some specific result, that confirms the concept, can be described.
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| '''S2.''' Refutability:
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| In the terms of the concept, some specific experiment with some specific result, that negates the concept, can be described.
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| '''S3.''' Self-consostency: No internal contradictions of the concept are known.
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| '''S4.''' Principle of correspondence: It the range of validity of a new concept intersects the range of validity of another already accepted concept, then, the new concept either reproduced the results of the old concept,
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| or indicated the way to refute it. (For example, the estimate of the range of validity of the old concept may be wrong.)
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| '''S5.''' Pluralism: Mutually-contradictive concepts may coexist;
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| if two concepts satisfying S1-S5 have some common range of validity, then, in this range, the simplest of them has priority.
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| All the six properties aboveare compulsory. For example, if the range of validity of a concept is the [[full set]]
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| (id est, the concept is valid every time and everywhere), then it does not satisfy S0, and there is no need to check properties S1-S5 to qualify such a concept as non-scientific.
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| Scientific concepts are built on the base of observations, experiments, axioms, hypothesis, theorems and theories.
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| [[Observation]] means identification of some phenomena which are in some sense similar.
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| [[Axioms]] are statements that are considered as initial at the building-up of some concept.
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| Concept with commonly accepted axioms is called "paradigm''.
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| [[Theorems]] are statements that are proven on the base of axioms and definitions.
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| Sometimes this term is used even in those cases then the proof of the statement is not yet constructed
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| but is expected to be constructed in future. In such cases the term "hypothesis'' or "Conjecture''
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| is more suitable.
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| If the hypothesis is deduced from the postulates and other, already proven theorems,
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| it becomes a theorem.
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| If a hypothesis had predicted some non-trivial results of observations or experiments,
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| it becomes a theory.
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| Activity, related with development of new concepts is called research. The most important classification of sciences is based on the subject of the research, the goal and the methods, that dominate in the research:<br>
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| humanitarian --- natural,<br>
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| fundamental --- applied and <br>
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| theoretic --- experimenal.<br>
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| At the beginning of century XXI, not all sciences are developed sufficiently to allow the use all the eight resulting options. Before Hooke and Newton, the deduction was prerogative of mathematics and not so often in physics, if at all. Before [[quantum mechanics]] was developed a science, deducing was not possible in chemistry.
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| Until now, many concepts in biology and the humanitarian sciences are built up on the base of guesses and verification, rather than on the base of deduction. In particular, [[experimental astrophysics]] as well as [[experimental history]] or [[theoretic biology]] usually refer to a form of [[science–fiction]] rather than to a science.
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| [[Mathematics]] is the most important science, it makes up the basis of other sciences. There is not any science which dares to contradict mathematics.
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| [[Computational mathematics]] and [[cybernetics]] serve as a bridge between mathematics and other forms of knowledge. General physics and theoretical physics relate mathematics to other sciences,
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| although some sciences (even humanitarian ones) may use, for example, the statistical methods without referring to physics.
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| If some science concept contradicts the basic [[paradigm]]s of mathematics or those of physics, then according to S5 a way should be indicated to prove that they are wrong.
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| ==Sciences and society==
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| Usually the sciences, and especially the fundamental ones do not give a fast benefit, as other types of knowledge. The spending of the budget funding to support the satisfaction of the personal curiosity of researchers requires justification. There were intents to submit the development of science to other goals (creation of facilities of the modernization of the industry, or increasing of the military power of a country, etc.). Some researches, especially those which have been applied, can be motivated in such a way; and the results may be scientific.
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| During human history, a motivation for science which was more efficient than the curiosity of researchers who did it was not developed. Yet, there is no other way to make the deep science.
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| However, the needs of industry can be mentioned as motivation for the financial support of the curiosity of researchers.
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| The distribution of funds assigned for the development of science is a serious problem.
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| Administrators of funds cannot drill deeply into the research they finance.
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| The funds are distributed on the base of the formal criteria: publications, citation,
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| participation in the conferences.
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| The ability to write the grant applications and good relations with colleagues and the distributors of funds become important, if not dominant, factor in the success in the getting of the financial support.
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| For the same reason, the spectacularity of the new effects is important for their promotion.
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| Especially non-efficiently the funds are sent in the countries with corrupted bureaucracy;
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| and not only because the significant part of foundation is spent for bribes and the private security.
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| The government being unable to keep the growth of the technology of the country at the international level begins to secret the scientific achievements in order to enable the monopolistic use in the military industry.
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| Often, the results are fake: the secrecy protects them from critics and opens wide field for
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| both wanted and unwanted errors.
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| In a totalitaristic country, some sciences may be not only left without foundation, but crashed by the physical repression of researchers, as it happened in the USSR with the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, cybernetics and genetics. Previously, in Europe, similar phenomena took place with respect to astronomy and physiology in the epoch of the [[Holy Inquisition]].
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| The properties S0-S5 allow to distinguish scientific concepts from other concepts without fighting pseudoscience. It is in particular researches such as [[inertial propulsion]] which can be identified as a form of fraud, not as science, because the criterion 4 (the principle of correspondence) is violated.
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| ==Objectivity== | |
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| Past century, Karl Popper had described some especially efficient kind of knowledge. He called it [[science]]. However, not only [[science]] iteself, but, perhaps, even term "science'' was in use even before Popper. But Popper seems to be first, who formulated the criterion of [[refutability]] as the essential property of ANY scientific concept.
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| <ref name="pop1">
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| {{cite book | |
| |first= Karl
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| |last= Popper
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| |title= Conjectures and Refutations
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| |publisher= London: Routledge and Keagan Paul,
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| |year=1963
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| |pages= 33-39
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| |url=http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_falsification.html | |
| }}</ref>. The results by Popper can be expressed in the following sentences:
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| <i>
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| 1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory -- if we look for confirmations.
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| 2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory. | |
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| 3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
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| 4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
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| 5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
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| 6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of ``corroborating evidence''.)
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| 7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status.
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| </i>
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| In the Popper's terminology, falsifiability and refutability are [[synonym]]s. In this century, the term "falsifivation" is ambiguous. Firstly, it may mean rejection, the refuting of a concept on the base of its internal contradictions revealed, or for the reason of contradiction with some experimental results, observations. Second, the same term may mean the misinformation, fabrication, fraud, non–honest fabrication of something that pretends to be information or knowledge. For this reason, it is better not use term "falsification", using the terms "refutation" or "fraud", dependently on the meaning required.
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| The request of refutability does not allow any [[objectivity]]; science appears as a special tool to make the efficient predictions, rather than as any kind of '''objective''' knowledge.<ref name="imre">{{cite book
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| | first=Imre
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| | last= Lakatos
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| | title= Science as Successful Prediction (Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge)
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| | publisher= New York: Cambridge University Press
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| | year= 1970
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| | pages=91-195
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| | url=http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/lakatos_prediction.html#see
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| }}</ref> | |
| Then, the principles of Science appear as a pretty general (but still empiric)
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| set of criteria that allow to qualify some knowledge as scientific and ''expect'' its efficiency.
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| The requirement of refutability opposes the {\em believe} in the ability to get some {\em objective} knowledge.
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| The idea by Popper were not accepted by colleagues, as the growth of knowledge is believed to dominate over the refutation.
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| <ref name="Martin">{{cite journal
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| | author= Martin Gardner
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| | title= A Skeptical Look at Karl Popper
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| | journal= [[Skeptical Inquirer]]
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| | year= 1972
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| | volume=25
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| | issue=4
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| | pages=91-195
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| | url=http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gardner_popper.html
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| }}</ref>.
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| The ignorance of refutability and believes into some objective knowledge leads to the growth of pseudo-science and suppression of really new branches of science. For example, in the USSR, in its time, even the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, cybernetics were suppressed as pseudo-sciences; the [[inertial propulsion]] and lysenkoism can be considered as relatively modern examples of pseudo–science.
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| <ref name="soyfer">{{cite journal
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| | author= V.N.Soyfer
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| | title=The consequences of political dictatorship for Russian science.
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| | year=2001
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| | volume=2
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| | issue=9
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| | journal=Nature Reviews Genetics
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| | pages=723-729
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| | doi=10.1038/35088598
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| | url=http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v2/n9/full/nrg0901_723a.html
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| |url=http://tracerkinetics.engr.iupui.edu/Ethics%20Course%2009/Journal%20articles/lysenko-nature-rev-genetics2001-nrg0901_723a.pdf}}</ref>
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| <ref name="bonnie">{{cite journal
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| | title=Political Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union and in China: Complexities and Controversies
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| | author= Richard J. Bonnie, LLB
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| | journal= [[Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law]]
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| | volume=30
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| | pages=136–144
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| | year=2002
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| }}</ref>.
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| The main property, that distinguish any pseudoscience from any science (whenever the concepts are true or false) is neither an [[objectivity]], nor a [[truth]] of a research or a concept (only God knows the Truth), but the way the concept is constructed and its attitude with respect to other concepts. The scientific concept may be false, but it should provide ways to reveal it (and reject it).
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| ==Notes==
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| <references/>
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