Philosophers and the common man have pondered the meanings of words such as knowledge, understanding, knowing, learning.  What is knowledge?   Who has it?  How does one get it?  From Plato to Kuhn the questions surface.  This topic does not stay in the realm of history and  academics but enters our every day world too.  First let’s look at these terms and how they relate and then look at a conflict about knowledge which appeared this week in a local paper.

             Learning, understanding, knowledge.  To me they are on a continuum.  They are interrelated in that one can not possess knowledge without the steps of learning the information and understanding it.   Not everyone, such as a newborn, can experience any of these, and yet some can pass through all three steps.

            Learning starts the process.  Facts or feelings are processed and even an infant can learn that certain actions evoke responses.  When the baby cries, the caretaker answers the call in the best situations.  Manipulation of the information is not an issue at the learning stage.  Children learn information and can tell you what they know.  They may not know what to do with what they have seen or sensed but they have processed some sensory information.  When students learn a second or foreign language, at the beginning, they hear words which don’t make sense to them.  As they learn the context or meaning of the words then they can progress to the next step of assigning meaning and then to understanding.

            Understanding necessitates making mental connections with the new information which has been learned.  Understanding entails being able to grasp the meaning of the information and being able to manipulate it to serve a purpose.  For example in school we hope that educational practices are aimed at understanding rather than simple learning.  Education, which we will see in a later example, should at least be aimed at working with the facts and information we have learned in order to get a firm mental grasp of meaning and application.  Most adults are capable of understanding unless they are severely mentally disabled.  My husband’s cousin suffered oxygen deprivation during birth and now as an adult of almost 50, he has learned to do certain repetitive actions and swim but he can not understand speech or make mental connections.  He can learn but he cannot understand.  He can be trained but not educated.

            Knowledge is a dynamic.  Knowledge entails manipulating and drawing on our understanding in order to keep learning and building on our knowledge base.  It is always expanding.  It is ever changing as we add to what we understand and change what we thought we knew.  Our knowledge base keeps growing and what we learn may contradict what we have known before.  The solar system was thought to be earth-centered and then Copernicus discovered otherwise.  The atom  was thought to be the smallest unit of matter.  Now we have subatomic particles.  Fractals revolutionized geometry and amplified the knowledge base for mathematics and physics.  Research, the search for knowledge, continually adds to what we know with new concepts, terms, and artifacts.

            When I think of repositories of knowledge, one of the main ones which comes to mind is the conglomeration of Smithsonian museums.  The initial Smithson bequest stated that the mission of the Smithsonian would be ‘to increase and diffuse knowledge’.  (Washington Post, Jan. 27, 2002)  However, the Washington Post carried an article in which a retired director of one set of museums directed by the Smithsonian, challenges the direction that the administration of the Smithsonian is taking .  He was informed by Secretary Lawrence Small that the days of pursuing knowledge are out.     The Smithsonian staff has been told that “learning how to ask questions about the world we live in and then exploring possible answers... is not an appropriate activity for the Smithsonian.”  The word ‘research’ is not to be used but ‘education’ can be used.  Curiosity-driven research has no place in the Smithsonian.  This shift from research  to simply passing on information which already exists is almost as drastic as the attitude towards knowledge which was portrayed in the movie, The Name of the Rose.  The monks in the movie were dealing with just what was known at the time.  They were not pursuing knowledge.  In my opinion, telling the directors of the Smithsonian that they cannot pursue research is going directly against the original bequest and against the mission of the institution.

           Knowledge.  It can stir our passions and fire our imaginations.   We can try to define it, seek it, hide it, argue about it, deny it,  stifle it,  possess it.  One certainty is that knowledge will be a topic of scholars and laymen for generations to come as it has been throughout history.