Types of Knowledge
Knowledge can be classified upon a priori knowledge, which is obtained without needing to observe the world, and a posteriori or empirical knowledge, which is only obtained after observing the world or interacting with it in some way.
Often knowledge is gained by combining or extending other knowledge in various ways. Isaac Newton famously wrote: "If I have seen further... it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". (This in order to mollify Robert Hooke) to prevent a dispute.
Inferential knowledge is based on reasoning from facts or from other inferential knowledge such as a theory. Such knowledge may or may not be verifiable by observation or testing. The distinction between factual knowledge and inferential knowledge has been explored by the discipline of general semantics.
Read more about this topic: Descriptive Knowledge
Famous quotes containing the words types of, types and/or knowledge:
“... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“He types his laboured column—weary drudge!
Senile fudge and solemn:
Spare, editor, to condemn
These dry leaves of his autumn.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“Yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor
Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
And the desire to believe in a metaphor.
It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
Belief, that what it believes in is not true.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)