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A Perspective: Knowledge - A Tool
Almada F1*, Fernando C2 and Vicente A3
1Retired University Professor/Independent Researcher, Portugal
2University of Madeira - CITUR, Portugal
3University of Beira Interior - CIDESD, Portugal
Submission: October 21, 2021; Published: January 18, 2022
*Corresponding author: Vicente A, University of Beira Interior - CIDESD, Portugal
How to cite this article: Almada F, Fernando C, Vicente A. A Perspective: Knowledge - A Tool. J Phy Fit Treatment & Sports. 2022; 9(4): 555766. DOI: 10.19080/JPFMTS.2022.09.555766
Keywords: Wisdom; Knowing; Insight; Thinking; Culture; Judicious position
Introduction
Interestingly, knowledge is nothing more than a tool. Powerful, no doubt, but no more than a tool. Man (life?) developed this tool over millions of years, in which the need to understand phenomena, the way to deal with them, their existence, the probabilities of their happening again…, forced man to identify them, to memorize them, to understand them in some of their aspects that interfered with man and his activities, the effects they have, …. In a generic way, to become aware of the phenomena and to memorize this acquired awareness. Life, any life, is not possible without this strange thing of knowledge. We say strange thing, because when we try to define knowledge, the difficulties we feel are even greater than those we encounter when we try to define (mark the limits) of most sounds we call words. Knowledge is not comprehension, or understanding, or information, or wisdom, or knowing, or insight, or thinking, or culture, ... To know what knowledge is, we must know what the phenomenon of knowledge is – a paradox, which, however, is true, although it clashes with the obligation not to include in a definition of a term, the term we are trying to define. Knowing can be familiar with …; being aware of the existence of a phenomenon or thing; to have a feeling or even a perception of the existence of something.
However, despite all these ambiguities, knowledge is an ability to become aware of the existence of a phenomenon that is worth recording and, in this way, to allow this information to be treated in elaborate ways. Even in the simplest life forms we find this ability to detect and react to stimuli such as temperature changes, exposure to acidic substances, the action of light rays, etc., which means that there is a construction of a response (detect and react, however basic these reactions are) from the stimulus received. This does not mean that the complexity of these processes represents a better answer, an answer that increases sophistication, reaching a higher level. Detecting more stimuli, treating them in more difficult ways, affecting more complicated or difficult-to-reach stimuli beyond the benefits it can provide has costs (direct, indirect, and collateral) that we cannot ignore. Simplification is, therefore, a rule to comply with and the benefit/cost ratio (that is, efficiency) happens as a result and not by imposition (therefore, it does not need an imposing entity).
[Note - a corollary that results from, with some rare exceptions, the smaller the costs, the greater the probability of reaching the necessary conditions for the appearance of benefits].
Knowledge depends, as we have just seen, on a process that goes through:
a) Existence of a phenomenon or thing;
b) Ability to detect the occurrence;
c) Ability to record the incident found;
d) Possibility of relating different data collected;
e) Possible ability to transmit (send/receive) available elements.
A process that follows this entire sequence of steps, whatever the complexity it faces.
Thus, we think it is important to launch some aspects that should be taken care of in relation to points that we consider to be key in this entire issue.
a) Knowledge is a complex and constantly changing phenomenon, which is why it is essential not to look at it solely, or even predominantly, in its current state. It is also important to understand its genesis and to define objectives prospectively, so that we can have an idea of its evolutionary process, so that we can intervene efficiently in it;
b) In the transformations that take place, permanently, in the knowledge process, the coherences and balances pass through different dominances and dialectics in their different aspects.
For example - the construction and production of knowledge, despite the exponential increase it has had in recent decades, has not been able to keep up with the increase in dissemination capacity; the consumption of knowledge, given the overwhelming offer, cannot maintain a judicious position, causing a degradation of quality; as a consequence of the above, the institutions in charge of the availability/distribution of knowledge suffer deep crises and readjustment needs that force them to degrade their functions, namely, privileging emotion over depth, price over quality.
New coherences and balances must be found quickly, without resorting to the temptation to go back to the past, as the future (even in the short term) will be very different from that past.
a) Still following the previous point, the “excess in supply” of knowledge leads to a tendency for those who should “open the way” for new knowledge (scientists, educators, politicians, institutional leaders, etc.), to be tempted to limit themselves to “follow the fashions” of the paths already opened (the “symbioses” become “parasitism”). With obvious effects on the evolutionary process, on individuals and societies;
b) Epistemology is an essential area for structuring our understanding of what knowledge is, especially scientific knowledge. But it is not the only aspect to consider on this topic.
We cannot, within the scope of an article, do more than leave some suggestions and launch some clues, thus hoping to open doors for more solid and in-depth debates, generating the appetite and controversy that motivates the continuation of the process. Thus, continuing, we have that, whether like it or not, knowledge is a function of dialectics that occur in the most diverse contexts [1].
But a context is a construction that we elaborated with the knowledge tool, about the world around us seen in the light of the knowledge we have and according to the knowledge that we are going to build.
Some Caricature Pictures To Be Synthetic And Incisive
(An Image Can Even Be Valid for Many Words)
The perspective depends on where we are and “who we are”
We can think of the world in many ways and any of them have consequences in our daily lives and in the most banal situations. At the limit, each person has their own scenario1, with some differences from everyone else’s scenarios.
From Several Reference Frameworks - The Reference Framework Of Those Who Use, Personal, But Which Can Be Shared In A Gross Way, For Example Through Education
We say “gross way” because in the evolution of the individual there are always the previous scenarios that influence the “path” of the individual.
The Contexts: We Consider Are Always A Matter Of Perspective, But Also A Function Of The Knowledge We Have And Form Us (a consequence of the past of man and of each person) [2,3].
An Evolutionary Process
For millions of years, in a dialectic with everything that surrounds us, which is sometimes invisible to our ability “to see”, we transformed ourselves, seeking to adapt in order to overcome the difficulties we faced and the obstacles we confront. To stop this process of adaptation (intrinsic and extrinsic) is to condemn us to disappear, as everything is in permanent change (“inside” - cells, organs, microbiomes, etc.; “outside” the dimensions, at least from the Universe). Whichever perspective we use, as we intend to indicate with the scenarios presented above. A dialectic in which everything interacts with everything else (directly or indirectly) that led us, for example, to refine the stimuli that we thought would best suit our needs, in a permanent selection, because as we say above, every benefit has costs, and our ability to “pay costs”, at all levels, is very limited (since even “capacities”, actual or even potential, have costs). But stimuli are information that must be converted into useful knowledge (to be tools not just dead weight), so that we can “perform a work” with them, useful, in a continuity of processes (for which we do not need an entity, whatever it may be, imposing, or of those who make the accounting of benefits/costs, as the coherences and balances we are subject to are “narrow” and, like the benefits, errors and their costs accumulate and, sooner or later, they will be paid). To convert stimuli into knowledge, we “turn them” into sensations with which we build scenarios, perceptions [4].
Man’s frailties led him to seek security, real or imagined, and to build strategies that would allow him to remain within the limits of his capabilities and potentials (a reserve). But the stimuli (information) we receive have short limits (temporal, spatial, informational, etc.). Beyond the scope of the stimuli that we can detect (which we selected in the dialectic process mentioned above) we learn to extrapolate, to go beyond the horizons we reach. In this way, we learn that beyond there are things we can portend. In a process that normally develops between the ages of three and four, man (like many other animals and possibly even plants) realizes that, beyond the immediate reach, he does not have to take the “face value” that he has, but that there is … “a whole world to explore”. And an entire evolutionary process to unpack.In this perspective on the knowledge tool, we look for foundations so that, together with other articles that consolidate other supports, through the exposure of positions that we assume to the “scientific community”, subjecting us, therefore, to refutation. Thus, we seek to legitimize the bases for the publication of a work on the functionality of man, under the title “The Next Technological Determinant Jump: Interpretation of Human Functionality with the concepts of ARAT (Transformation) and Mental Schema (Stability)”.
We select the world we live in: because we imagine the worlds we realize and we are not always exempt in our choices
What we see is an interpretation of what exists, not a reality (whatever reality can be). Why do we insist on insisting on this point in several of the publications we produce? Because there are reasons that interlock with each other and force us to conclude that a profound change is needed to get out of the crisis in which we find ourselves. A crisis that everyone accepts to exist, but that very few try to make factual, to finish being a mere slogan that is well-thought-of to repeat. One more slogan, in a world made up of slogans, because the excess of information makes it difficult to go deeper into issues and even science, which had the obligation to, in addition to deepening themes closed in areas and disciplines (which is also fundamental), not to forget that the whole, with the dynamics and dialectics that are established, is not sympathetic to the convenience of simply putting phenomena under microscopes.
Understanding and explaining phenomena requires much more. Because:
i. Not only is the whole not the mere sum of the parts (another slogan, which will only be useful if, beyond words, it is articulated with strategies, praxis, operational cadres, etc.);
ii. But also because, not least, the phenomena we observe (which we receive stimuli, which we transform into sensations to give rise to perceptions according to our frame of reference) are an interpretation, our interpretation as seen.
The methodologies used (and accepted) in science cannot fail to take these two points into account5.
Ian Hacking tell us in “Representing and Intervening” (Cambridge University Press) in this regard, for example, that: “Positivists …. Are anti-realists about both theories and entities… Positivists are dubious about such concepts as causation and explanation…”.
Conclusion
It is not enough to be rigorous and precise. In addition to trying to avoid the interference of artifacts that could disturb the observation, it is essential to try to grasp the globality of the phenomenon (of which the observer and the signal are integral parts, naturally beyond “what” we are going to try to “introduce into the microscope” which some believe to be the totality of the phenomenon) using the capabilities we learned to do in others contexts at about four years, as we have seen above [6]. The crisis will be fought much more efficiently (or can it only be brawled in this way?) if we understand these features, thus facing the unknown and uncertainties, in a process that some will find uncomfortable (error in education, which was limited trying to integrate students into the existing framework… instructing and not educating which are very different things), but that are seductive challenges for building new worlds.
References
- Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2020) Strategies in Knowledge Treatment: Decision-Making and Operating Conceptual Research. Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research 32(2).
- Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2021) Science and Knowledge Investigation and Decision at 2, 3, 4, 5, n Dimensions. Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research 35(2).
- Almada F, Fernando A, Lopes H, Vicente A (2019) Searching for Coherences and Anomalies CPQ Orthopaedics 3(5): 01-08.
- Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2021) Strategical, Tactical and Operational Errors in Science and Knowledge in General. CPQ Orthopaedics 5(3): 01-12.
- Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2021) Science: Scarcity Versus Plenty. Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research 37(3).
- Almada F, Fernando A, Vicente A (2021) Conceptual Tools to Think Man. Advances in Orthopedics and Sports Medicine 2021(4).
