Dear Rosan
If you don't have understanding you have information but not knowledge (a mistake
undergraduate students make all too often). However, you can put the concept of
'knowing' into action without it necessarily being knowledge. We are 'knowing' all
the time, and switching between tacit knowing and explicit knowing (Schon/Polanyi)
mostly without being aware of doing so - it is when knowledge has to enter the
equation that we 'wake up' from this state and turn information into
knowledge/understanding. Example: we are driving a car, and doing the many automatic
things that need to be done, without 'thinking' and without much 'understanding'.
Real 'understanding' is waiting in the wings, so to speak. If a situation occurs
that necessitates a 'waking up' or quick response to an emergency, we either have an
accident or we avoid one - depending on your ability to elevate, if you will, the
low level use of information into a higher level use of 'knowledge' - or applied
information. This presupposes that you are able to project and think in the
abstract, meaning think about what has not happened yet, but is likely to happen,
based on your calculations which are based on the information that you receive
during those split seconds.
And this is just one version ...
As for Norm's post (which I like very much) - a process of becoming or growing to
know > 'understanding': the word winanggaay is somewhat the way we use 'verstaan',
and why I mentioned verstehen could be some form of 'theory of action'. Not, as Ken
points out, a direct correlation, but a kind of 'understanding' (tacit agreement?)
between the two terms in the sense that the Aboriginal word has it (?). A word that
is a term that speaks of something happening and things that happened - which is why
'verstaan' points to the past (even if it is the immediate past as in "have you been
listening, and did anything change in your view of ..."), while meaning the
present/future ("... and can you now ...").
If knowledge is 'in the world', which can be said of design knowledge, then
undertanding can also be 'in the world' where we learn like a wanggaay that learns
to 'be open to' where 'knowledge' comes from (or more correctly, where and how
knowledge is generated, and learn by which normative systems knowledge can be
created).
Johann
Rosan Chow wrote:
> Dear all
>
> I really have to admit I don't grasp the concepts of 'knowlege' or 'knowing', if
> you prefer, and 'understanding' all that well. However, just assume for now
> there are real meaningful differences between the two. And they exist
> independently. My question today is:
>
> What kind of knowledge do we have if we don't have understanding?
>
> Best Regards
> Rosan
>
> Rosan Chow
> Graduate Student
> College of Design
> North Carolina State University
> n
--
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