I used to think that knowledge was unilateral and could be acquired primarily through books. This was instilled in me by the education system, and only once I was out of the education system did it become much more apparent that books can only confer a very specific kind of knowledge.
If you traveled the world, would you be qualified to talk about the statistics of poverty? Or the demographics of a city? Traveling while young has often been encouraged on the basis of “learning about the world”, but it begs the question of what there is to be learned. Does your stay at a Parisian cafe confer something upon you that is unique? Does the touring of famous monuments give you greater insight to history? I don’t know that either can do these things, but to visit a cafe in Paris certainly gives you the experience of visiting a cafe in Paris, while visiting various monuments can give you the experience of visiting various monuments. Seeing poverty cannot give you an understanding of poverty, but it can give you the experience of seeing it. Lest it sound like I’m downplaying experience, I think it’s important to note that experience tends to move us, and is explicitly the purview of the empirical: there is simply no way to replicate it otherwise.
I once knew a girl who was a breastfeeding “expert” for some sort of clinic or health department. As far as I am aware, she has never had a child, nor breastfed one. I’ve always been rather confused by this.
It is often mentioned that mechanics know how to change parts, but don’t know how to design or build them. On the other hand, an engineer might know how to design a part, but might be rather surprised when his recommendation on how to change it is corrected by the mechanic, who knows a better way. The people who built the system aren’t always the best-qualified to talk about it! Depending on your angle…. Just as those who build software aren’t always best qualified to talk about how it behaves or is used.
You can’t know everything.
And what is worth knowing? This is the question that haunts me, as someone who enjoys learning. When I dream about making a difference in the world, I often think about knowing a great deal of something and using this knowledge to make the world a better place, but you could have entire libraries memorized and still make no difference. Knowledge, in itself, is inert.
I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever pursue a master’s degree in economics, or anthropology, or history, or even philosophy. But does “being smart” actually make the difference?
Some anthropologists spend their entire career working in one remote community. They learn a great deal about that community. But are they therefore not qualified to talk about other communities? Are they only anthropologists insofar as they know many? If they endeavor to work with many communities, how deeply could they be said to have learned any one of them?
For that matter, would one on the outside, who has thoroughly studied the ethnographic literature but never been a participant-observer, not be considered an anthropologist?
Generally speaking, it would seem there are 4 key ways of knowing: empirical, statistical, theoretical, and logical. Empirical is done through experience, and is associated with “know-how”. Statistical is done through aggregation and population data, and much of its value comes from the conclusions it makes based on this data. Theoretical is done primarily through reading and must put great faith in the words that have been written and their veracity, attempting to draw conclusions from such writings. Logical is done through logic and syllogistic thinking, and can often be aided by thought games.
Which of these you focus on will be the result of your personality and your background, but each one limits the scope of the others. If you enjoy experiencing everything up close, you can only form solid opinions on those things you experience; you must supplement this with theoretical knowledge if you wish to fit your experiences into a larger whole (or you must expand your experience at the sacrifice of depth). Opposite this is the statistical, which requires no experience at all, but a great understanding of how to make good inferences from data. Theoretical knowledge can be vastly useful, but it comes at the cost of pedigree, as you are technically something of an outsider if you don’t have any empirical experience (the proverbial Broke Finance Professor is an example of when this turns out for the worst). Logical is the oddball as it usually never exists alone, but is sometimes the most powerful when it is irrefutable.
I guess one question to start with is…what kind of difference do I want to make? What flavor of knowledge is best-suited for making it?
This is a stub of a post that could be taken in many directions. It’s late. I should probably go to bed.