Dear Martin and Luke, and all
I now realize that Knowledge is different from “Conhecimento” the word that translates Knowledge into Portuguese.
Both parties described by Luke are in fact dealing with a pragmatic approach to knowledge that allows it only to exist in one’s mind.
I send a post yesterday about this, but a guess it got lost due to my electronic clumsiness.
Both the intellectualist and the anti-intellectualist views are originated in knowledge as noun originated in a verb that did not got it’s autonomy from the verb form. Both views describe what happens in one’s mind when we can afford to say "I know something" or "he/she knows something" or "they know something", theoretical, practical or whatever.
When I say "I know" something in Portuguese I use: "eu sei". The verb “saber” is related with the nouns (that we called substantives) "o saber” “a sabedoria” and more erudite “a sapiência”. If I do not designate the owner of these qualities, they designate a common shared beliefs in a group of persons less erudite or more erudite. In our structure of thought (maybe resulting from Roman or Catholic or even Platonic influence) this conferes to saber, sabedoria or sapiência a the nature of a quality, by definition existing external from psychological effects in each individual.
However, the word “Conhecimento” is even more external to individuals since it really designates normally the amount of things that are known by humans and especially the things known in science, history, geography (or volcanology) and externally expressed as such. So when I say for instance: the authors of the first Encyclopedia wanted to gather all the “Conhecimento” of their epoch in a book, is perfectly valid in Portuguese.
Just to give you an idea. When I say “eu conheço John Stuart Mill” it only means that I have met him personally (so, yes I don’t know him). If I say: "Eu conheço a obra de John Stuart Mill” it normally means that I know the number of books he wrote or the main axis of his thoughts or even everything he wrote. When I say: “eu tenho conhecimento da obra de JSM” I’m simply saying that I know that his work exists. O Conhecimento, has therefore a meaning that is “above” the instrumental acts of conhecer.
Anyway, “o Conhecimento” is different from the act of “conhecer", in part constituted by the acts of “saber" and not exclusively resulting from that acts by designating in fact what is visible, collectible, identifiable as external manifestations of numerous acts that had the merit to be fixed in books, images (like maps for instance), formulas, graphs and, of course cultural usage. I can say for instance: Almost all the “conhecimento” in the Middle Ages was gathered in the Monasteries’ Libraries. Or almost all “conhecimento” of Antiquity was gathered in Alexandria Library.
I don’t want to get back to my original question, since I’m now convinced, that Knowledge, the English word can not be contained by inanimate objects.
Accepting this, it’s really liberating since you can learn from anything, any place as long as you find information for you to make sense and form beliefs from. The consequence is that books or texts have no prerogative in forming knowledge since they are neutral inanimate objects like a gramophone in space. So you can form knowledge from anything depending, alas, from the amount of knowledge you have already about that sort of things.
So, after, this discussion, I don’t think, considering knowledge in the English Language sense, that there should be a hierarchy but more of a taxonomy on the beautiful tree of getting to know stuff.
But if you admit the existence of “Conhecimento” as a human social construct verifiable outside each individual, you must admit that some objects organize information in a way that purposely are made for that construction.
Eduardo Corte-Real
PhD Arch.
Associate Professor
Professor Associado com Agregação
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Av. Dom Carlos I, nº4, 1200-649 Lisboa, Portugal
T: +351 213 939 600
> No dia 23/10/2017, às 15:46, Salisbury, Martin <[log in to unmask]> escreveu:
>
> Dear Eduardo and all,
>
> The discussion about whether knowledge can be 'contained' in something is an interesting one but surely really only tells us about the use, and limitations of, (word) language? Most would agree that knowledge is 'acquired' from books and from paintings and artefacts. But it would seem that this is not the same as saying that the books, paintings and artefacts 'contain' knowledge.
>
> What I find interesting about Luke Feast's initial, helpful outline of research into human communication/ transmission is that it seems to support the view that we should be wary of suggestions of hierarchies between word-language and picture/artefact-language when it comes to the transmission or dissemination of knowledge.
>
> Best,
>
> Martin
>
> Professor Martin Salisbury
> Course Leader, MA Children's Book Illustration
> Director, The Centre for Children's Book Studies
> Cambridge School of Art
> 0845 196 2351
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