Skip to main content

Knowledge and Knowing

 

Knowledge and Knowing

 

"To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day." — Lao Tzu.

Knowledge is information acquired from external sources. Knowing, on the other hand, emerges from within and determines how facts are comprehended. Knowledge has no value without knowing while knowing can exist without knowledge.

A child knows how to recognise parents, communicate and play without any formal instructions. Village wisdom knows the right time to sow plants, or cure with herbs, without knowledge of botany or biology, relying on collective memory and connection to nature.  Most of us know how to change a light bulb or operate a computer without knowledge of how electricity if produced or how binary technology works.

In Europe knowledge gained priority over knowing around the scientific revolution of the 17th C establishing rational knowledge as superior to subjective experience. Other civilisations such as those of India or the Muslim world, continued to see both knowledge and knowing as deeply connected. 

The very first Quranic verse revealed was about the centrality of knowledge to human existence:  Allah taught by the pen, taught man that which he knew not. Yet the Truth could only be understood by intuitive knowing, what the Sufis called Ma’arif. 

Socrates believed true knowledge is not passively absorbed from the outside world, but is a recollection or anamnesis. The immortal soul possesses all universal truths, but forgets them upon birth. Learning is the recognition of what was already known. Ibn e Arabi formalised this with his concept of stages of knowledge by four Qalams or pens. He also says Ilm al Yaqin or knowing something through the proof of logic, is the first stage of Knowledge. The final stage is Haqq al-Yaqin - knowing through experience.  

The Greeks distinguished between episteme or knowledge, and gnosis or intuitive knowing. In medicine the terms diagnosis and prognosis, based on educated intuition, carry the suffix –gnosis.

Over the years, knowledge gained importance as the foundation of rationality, science and technology – the needs of the modern industrial era. Knowing was relegated to the margins, the subject of religion and spirituality, the arts or village wisdom.  Knowledge became commodified, structured and prescribed– an essential element of intellectual superiority, educational systems and public policy.

Until the arrival of internet search engines in the 1990s, there were only human search engines called librarians, or book shop owners. Knowledge was accessed by scholars, academics or the educated.  It was a slow considered process. Today knowledge is itemised. A Google search retrieves and ranks the best results, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands, in less than a second. In the last two years, AI generated articles have surpassed human-authored writing, suggesting knowledge is simply accessing what has already been written.  

Europe historically managed knowledge to project political and economic power, establishing regulatory institutions in every imaginable field, as benchmarks for global standards. Post-colonial Europe gradually lost its role as the central global trading hub.  Its 21st century strategy is "Europe of Knowledge”, investing in higher education, data management and research.

Knowledge which was once a universal human endeavour shared across civilisations, took on a political dimension.  The term ‘Knowledge Power Europe’ was coined by Professor Michael Young to underline the importance of knowledge to EU’s foreign policy and global relevance. It was to become a cultural filter, establish intellectual leadership, act as a coercive tool to persuade others to follow its regulatory regimes. The Lisbon Strategy (2000) set a goal of making Europe the ‘most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’, an integral part of geopolitical objectives. It is seen as epistemic colonialism -the systematic imposition of Eurocentric knowledge systems, values, and worldviews to overwrite indigenous or local ways of knowing.

The world is bracing for a seismic political transformation. It would be incomplete without intellectual transformation. T.S Eliot, in his poem, Little Gidding written in 1942, in the midst of WWII, longs for the flames of destruction to fold back.  “For last year's words belong to last year's language/And next year's words await another voice.” He vows:

 “We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time”

 

 

Durriya Kazi

May 30, 2026

Karachi

 durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

    The Ink of the Scholar   The ancient Greeks were the masters of philosophy and science for over 1000 years. The Agora of Athens which once resounded with the discussions of Socrates, Plato, and Sophocles is silent and empty today with broken pillars covered with weeds.   Rome once ruled the Mediterranean and beyond, but today is associated with Italian cuisine, fashion and art in the shadow of the ruins of the dreaded Colosseum where Roman emperors were entertained by gladiators fighting to the death.   That is the trajectory of all civilizations that reached great heights and then tumbled into fragmentation, their past glory all but forgotten.     The Islamic civilization too was once the most significant custodian of learning, and like the Greeks, many of its inventions, philosophies and laws are still an integral part of modern societies.     Unlike the Greek and Roman empires, the achievements of the Islamic empi...
Post a Comment
Read more
https://theconversation.com/at-once-silent-and-eloquent-a-glimpse-of-pakistani-visual-poetry-70544 ‘At once silent and eloquent’: a glimpse of Pakistani visual poetry February 13, 2017 6.55pm AEDT Author Durriya Kazi Head of department Visual Studies, University of Karachi Disclosure statement Durriya Kazi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above. Partners View all partners Republish this article Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence. Rickshaw poetry in Pakistan.  D.Kazi ,  CC BY-NC-ND   Email   Twitter 33   Facebook 239   LinkedIn 1  Print Whose mischief created a world of beseechers? Each petitioner is seen wearing a garment of paper This line from the famous Mughul poet  Ghalib ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Art and the State Art is often seen as existing outside the state. In Europe this concept emerged with   the Impressionist Movement of the 19 C which introduced the role of art for objective observation rather than a visual expression of the religious, social or political values of a society. In South Asia, art separated from the state when the post 1857 British occupiers of the Mughal court dismissed the many artists on the court payroll. All the rulers of India patronized the arts reaching a high point with the Mughals. Not only did they gather together the best artists, many acquired creative skills, from Akbar who was taught   drawing as a child by the miniature painter Khwaja   Abdus   Samad,    to Aurangzeb who learnt calligraphy from Syed Ali Tabrizi.   Women of the palace, courtiers and rulers of smaller kingdoms   took a   keen interest in architecture, garden design, crafts and clothing design.    The artist...
Post a Comment
Read more