Posted by Yogesh on June 18, 1997 at 08:35:25:

In Reply to: Re: Knowledge or Information?: A 'Musical' Analogy posted by Meckler on June 18, 1997 at 01:58:32:

Thank you for picking up on this one... The difference between information
and knowledge, as it has been suggested by some scholarly researchers as
well as practitioners, is a point of 'discomfort' for me... perhaps, the
key issue that I have been trying to understand is if knowledge is a
'state', or if it exists in its 'active' and 'constructive' nature.
Perhaps, I am thinking of two phenomena together: the 'state' and the
'active' nature of the state.

The point of discomfort lies in the literature's simplification in suggesting
information and knowledge are synonymous, and/or suggesting definitions
of knowledge that do not account for its 'active' nature. Again, trying to
look at some 'points' along this 'spectrum,' the associations seem to be:

Data - No Meaning, No Action - Machine End (Mechanistic)
Information - Meaning, No Action - Machine-Human Interface
Knowledge - Meaning*, Action - Human End (Dynamic & Constructive)

Perhaps, the greatest concern arises from using the notion of Meaning to
define Information, that is why I have - for the time - tried to distinguish
Meaning and Meaning* where (*) implies the constructive and dynamic component
of meaning which is perhaps missing from the notion of 'provided context'
independent of human construction. The distinction I am attempting to
draw is between 'context' which is [if it is] independent of human
construction and 'context' which is dependent upon it.

Philosophers of information and technology have argued this point along
similar lines. Examples include:

"To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the
concept of all of its life... Knowledge resides in the user and not in
the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information
that matters." -- Churchman (1971).

Physical messages do not by themselves have meaning. It is only through
the interpretation of a receiver that they are taken to convey a certain
meaning. -- (Rapp 1986).

These meanings would not exist "if human beings would not have created
the objects and entities" in them. -- (Strombach 1986).

Individual "sense" is a cognitive construction that is imposed upon the
facts to better organize understanding - sense is not intrinsic in the
reality, but is constructed by the individual. -- (Ropohl 1986).

My thinking on knowledge seems to concur with what Nonaka & Takeuchi say,
albeit their emphasis is not on the man-machine interface: "While traditional
epistemology emphasizes the absolute, static, and nonhuman nature of
knowledge, typically expressed in propositions and formal logic, we
consider knowledge as a dynamic human process of justifying
personal belief toward the "truth."" Adding to this point the distinction
between the 'semantic' and 'syntactic' aspects of information suggested
above, "Any preoccupation with the formal definition of information will
lead to a disproportionate emphasis on role of information processing,
which is insensitive to the creation of new meaning out of chaotic,
equivocal sea of information."

It is this active, dynamic, constructive nature of knowledge that makes
it more interesting for me, hence my interest in the process of
'knowledge creation' which I attempted to clearly distinguish from the
'static' notion of knowledge.

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Information, Knowledge and 'Knowledge Creation': Any Difference? Sangeetha 07:52:49 12/02/98 (0)
• Re: Information, Knowledge and 'Knowledge Creation': Any Difference? Jan W. Vasbinder 16:16:09 4/16/98 (0)
• Re: Information, Knowledge and 'Knowledge Creation': Any Difference? Meckler 14:51:25 6/18/97 (7)
  • Re: Information, Knowledge and 'Knowledge Creation': Any Difference? Don Mezei 13:54:51 6/19/97 (0)
  • Knowledge: Active Process of Anticipative Construction? Yogesh 17:15:51 6/18/97 (5)
    • Re: Knowledge: Active Process of Anticipative Construction? Meckler 13:48:53 6/20/97 (4)
      • On Learning and Knowledge Creation Yogesh Malhotra 01:06:38 6/21/97 (3)
        • Re: On Learning and Knowledge Creation Hans van der Perk 07:44:53 1/03/98 (1)
          • Re: On Learning and Knowledge Creation Yogesh Malhotra 02:14:10 1/06/98 (0)
        • Re: On Learning and Knowledge Creation Ricardo Correia 05:38:35 11/03/97 (0)

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