The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
|
|
Page 40 41 41 42 43 43 44 45 46 47 47 47 48 48 |
Epithet Symbols gather round the thing to be explained, understood, interpreted. The act of becoming conscious consists in the concentric grouping of symbols around the object, all circumscribing and describing the unknown from many sides. Each symbol lays bare another essential side of the object to be grasped, points to another facet of meaning. Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the center in question, the coherent symbol group, can lead to an understanding of what the symbols point to and of what they are trying to express.
Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of
Consciousness, 1954.
HHC © last revised
December 2004
Draft in Progress |
3.01 Trans-disciplinary induction can arguably accommodate the biological imperative to know as well as the immeasurability and incommensurability of knowledge. It cannot, however, escape the meta-methodological dilemma of language. Excepting tacit and tooled knowledge (6.0 Form & Fixation), knowledge finds expression through a human language, each of which, including mathematics (Boulding 1955), is subject to inherent conceptual and other limitations. This is certainly the case with English, the language of this dissertation. To know knowledge in English, one begins with the word - its origin and meaning, i.e., its etymology. A word, of course, is part of a language that in turn is the foundation of the traditional ‘nation’ or ‘people’, e.g., the Chinese, English, French, German or Japanese language, nation and/or people. In turn, ‘language’ derives from the Latin lingua meaning ‘tongue’, i.e., speech or “oral expression of thought or feeling” (OED, language, n 1,1a). In addition to words or vocabularies, languages differ in their grammar including their syntax, i.e., the ordering of words, and, when reduced to writing, they differ in alphabet (phonetic) and/or script (ideographic), e.g., Cyrillic, Kanji, Mandarin, Roman, etc., and, arguably, mathematics.
3.02 Spoken and written language is a defining feature of our species. It is the primary but not exclusive means by which human knowledge is expressed and exchanged between individuals and across generations. Sometimes, however, as with the Logical Positivists, language is treated as synonymous with knowledge which leads to other forms being ignored. This has been called “semantic ascent” (Baird 2003, 8). Nonetheless, “if language-in-use is this all-embracing sort of activity, stylizing most of our other activities as human beings, then man is best defined, not simply as a rational animal but as animal symbolicum - the language-using animal” (Aldrich 1969, 389).
3.03 Since the mythic Tower of Babel, language has served to define a nation. Within a nation, a common language serves to build community, trust and understanding; between nations language
40
creates alienation, confusion, and/or suspicion. If the primary vehicle for the creation and transmission of knowledge – language – is subject to systemic bias then what one means by ‘knowledge’ differs according to one’s language. And, as noted by the Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis: “Even accurate translation may be misleading, because in different cultures we use the same word with different meanings. There is a great danger of misunderstanding” (Lewis 2004).
3.05 To cite an example: Kawasaki in his analysis of science education notes that in Japanese there are no proper nouns in the Platonic sense of ‘idealized forms’ (Kawasaki 2002). Hence abstract concepts such as ‘the computer’ or ‘acceleration’ have meaning in Japanese only as specific experiential cases, not as abstract idealized forms. He suggests this may explain why the Japanese have excelled in technological innovation but lagged in the pure sciences. In contrast, the presence of abstract idealized nouns in English may explain why there appears, in my survey of sixteen sub-disciplines, no etymology of the word ‘knowledge’. In effect, it is treated as a universal, not as a particular. But the word ‘knowledge’ is, as will be demonstrated, particular to the English language.
3.06 Accordingly, a comparative etymology in all major languages, e.g., Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Spanish, is required to provide insight into the nature and meaning of ‘knowledge’ in a global knowledge-based economy. Ideally, a comprehensive comparative etymology would embrace all secondary, declining and even extinct languages. For present purposes, however, I restrict myself to English and to the origin and meaning of four words: can, know, knowledge and wit followed by a survey of related and imported words. I will then attempt a reconciliation of meanings. I draw primarily upon the Oxford English Dictionary (OED 2004) except for a few words whose etymology I derive from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (MWO 2004) including the word ‘science’.
3.07 The verb ‘can’ derives from the same root as ‘to know’, the old English cnáw (OED, can, v, etymology). The Old Teutonic sense was “to know, know how, be mentally or intellectually able” from which the sense “to be able generally, be physically able, have the power” derives. This sense of ‘know’ apparently derives from an even early meaning of “I have learned, I have attained to knowledge”. The ‘know’ sense of ‘can’ has, however, been absorbed by ‘know’ as in ‘know-how’ (OED, can, v. Significance, II, 3). By contrast, in German, this meaning is retained by a separate verb kennen. In this sense, much of the discussion about the ‘knowledge-based economy’ is actually about a ‘know-how’ or ‘can-do’ economy.
3.08 The word ‘know’ takes the form of a verb and two nouns in English. As a verb, it has ancient Teutonic and Aryan roots but is retained only in English. As has been seen, it shares its root cnáw with ‘can’ (as in ‘know-how’) but also with the obsolete English verb
41
‘ken’ meaning “to make known, to impart the knowledge” which in Scandinavian displaced ‘to know’ (OED, ken, v.1, 2). Know, in English, has also absorbed the territory of the archaic English verb ‘wit’, the root of the German wissen – to know. In fact, the English verb ‘know’ covers meanings expressed by two or more verbs in other Teutonic and Romantic languages, e.g., in German wissen, kennen, erkennen, and (in part) können; and in French connaître and savoir.
3.09 The OED notes that one group of scholars propose two distinct acts of knowing: knowing by the senses and knowing by the mind. [A] The first means to perceive or apprehend; the second, to comprehend or understand. The first derives from the Old English ‘know’ while the second derives from the archaic ‘wit’. Alternatively, another group of scholars proposes that the only proper object of knowing is a fact or facts derived by reason (OED Signification 2003) in contrast with ‘to believe’ with its sense of emotional rather than intellectual certainty (OED, know, v, III,10a).
3.10 The verb ‘know’ has five branches (I-V) with 56 different meanings and sub-meanings. Each branch begins at about the same time in history. Within each branch meanings are presented in the OED sequentially through time (OED, Preface to the Second Edition (1989) General explanations, III. The signification, or senses). The first branch (I) is rooted in the Old English ‘know’ and involves knowing by the senses primarily meaning ‘to perceive’. The second (II) corresponds to the French connaître and the German kennen meaning ‘to be acquainted with’ including sexual intimacy. The third (III) is rooted in the archaic English verb ‘wit’ and involves knowing by the mind corresponding to the French savoir and the German wissen. The fourth (IV) is rooted in the Old English verb ‘can’ meaning ‘know how’. Finally, the fifth (V) involves use of ‘know’ with prepositions such as know about, know of, etc.
3.11 ‘Know’, as a noun, takes two forms. The first is rooted in the early Middle English cnáw and is related to contemporary use of ‘acknowledgement’ and ‘confession’. The second is a recent formulation meaning ‘in the know’.
3.12 The word ‘knowledge’ takes the form of a verb and a noun. The OED notes that the origin and relationship between ‘knowledge’ as a verb and noun is problematic but concludes that the verb appeared first. As a verb ‘knowledge’ has ten meanings and sub-meanings. The oldest (obsolete until now perhaps) has specific significance for a knowledge-based economy: ‘to own the knowledge of’. Other obsolete meanings include ‘acknowledge’ and professional recognition, e.g., in medicine and law.
3.13 As a noun ‘knowledge’ has three branches and twenty-five meanings and sub-meanings. The first branch (I) involves the early sense of ‘know’ as a verb, i.e., acknowledgement, recognition and legal cognizance. The second (II) involves later uses of the verb and involves (i) the fact or condition of knowing as in ‘acquaintance’ including sexual intimacy; and (ii) the object of knowing as information, intelligence, the sum of what is known, branches of learning including the arts and sciences, and a sign, mark or token of
42
identity. The third branch (III) involves the use of ‘knowledge’ in combinations such as knowledge power and knowledge base, i.e., the underlying set of facts, assumptions, and inference rules used in a given discipline of thought.
3.14 The word ‘wit’ takes the form of three verbs, a noun and a pronoun. The first use of the verb ‘to wit’ is archaic except in law where it stands in a formula after the place name of the venue for a trial. In general, its archaic meaning of ‘cognizance’ or ‘knowledge of’ has been absorbed by ‘to know’. The second use is obscure in origin meaning ‘to bequeath’. The third is current and relates to ‘playing the wit’.
3.15 The OED traces four branches of ‘wit’ as a noun with thirty-four meanings and sub-meanings. The first branch (I) denotes a mental faculty. The first meaning is ‘the seat of consciousness or thought, the mind’ (OED, wit, n, I, 1). The second involves the faculty of thinking while the third involves faculties of perception “classified as outer (outward) or bodily, and inner (inward) or ghostly” (OED I, 3a). The fourth and final meaning under the first branch concerns the condition of understanding or mental capacity, e.g., sanity as being ‘in one’s right wit’. The second branch (II) involves ‘wit’ as a quality, e.g., of great mental capacity, wisdom, quickness, quality or lively fancy. The third (III) is chiefly obsolete involving senses corresponding to the Latin scientia and sentential. Meanings include learning, departments of knowledge or science as well as the way of thinking corresponding to ‘mind’. This is the sense of the German wissenschaft meaning learning, science or scholarship. The fourth and final branch (IV) involves the use of ‘wit’ in combination with other words such as at my wit’s end, wit-loss and wit-jar “an imaginary vessel humorously feigned to contain the wits or senses” (OED, wit, n, IV, 14e). As a pronoun, ‘wit’ has an obscure relationship to the pronoun ‘we’ as in ‘we two’.
3.16 There are several words in English directly related to ‘knowledge’. Many have been imported from other languages. They can be grouped according to ‘know by the senses’ and ‘know by the mind’. The first category – to know by the senses – includes the words: apprehension, conception, perception and science. Apprehension derives from the French meaning to seize or grasp. Conception derives from the Latin concipere ‘to conceive’ that, in turn, comes from ‘to take in’ and, as I understand it, colloquially, meant ‘to grasp firmly with the hand’ or, in contemporary Sicilian, ‘to steal’. Thus ‘a concept’ is a grasping and manipulation with a mental hand. Perception derives from the Old French out of the Latin meaning ‘to take or receive’. Science literally means ‘to know’ and derives from the Latin scientia compounded from scindere ‘to split’ or ‘to know’ with the Latin suffix entia that forms nouns of quality (a word derived from the Latin for ‘kind’), i.e., science involves splitting into kinds, types or taxonomies (MWO, science, n). Arguably, this is the etymological root of reductionism in contemporary science.
43
3.17 What all four share in common is a grasping and manipulation of the world – inner or outer. In terms of evolution, using its opposable thumb, humanity, long before language, reached out to shape the material world to compensate for its elemental frailty – no great size, no claws or talons and tiny canine teeth. To eat and survive predation, the human brain reached out with finger-thumb coordination to grasp and shape parts of the world into tools with which to then manipulate other parts, e.g., to kill game or plant seeds. It appears, from the fossil record, that the opposable thumb preceded, and in a path-dependent manner contributed to, the subsequent and extraordinarily rapid evolutionary growth and development of the human brain itself. Arguably ‘to know by the senses’ involves translation of this original experience of external manipulation into internal psychic or mental manipulation. This sense of ‘to know’ relates to its fourth branch (OED, know, v, IV) rooted in the Old English verb ‘can’ meaning ‘know how’.
3.18 The second category – to know by the mind – includes the words: comprehension, cognition, thinking and understanding. Comprehension derives from the Latin, and like apprehension, originally meant to seize but in later refinements in Latin and in English took the meaning ‘to grasp with the mind’ (OED, comprehend, v, Etymology). Cognition derives from the Latin meaning “to get to know”. Its original English, and present philosophic meaning, is roughly “the action or faculty of knowing; knowledge, consciousness; acquaintance with a subject”. Suggestively, both the adjective and noun ‘cognate’ involve common descent either of a language or a bloodline. Thinking derives from the Old English and means “formation and arrangement of ideas in the mind”. Understanding derives from the Old English and is equivalent to ‘comprehension’
3.19 From the above, I can report three findings. First, as a verb ‘to know’ has absorbed many meanings of the archaic verb ‘to wit’. Thereby, ‘to know by the senses’, in English, has become conflated with ‘to know by the mind’. As a noun, however, ‘wit’ survives defining the seat of consciousness of a natural person. This distinction - knowing through the senses vs. knowing through the mind – arguably plays an important role in continuing distinctions between the Liberal and the Mechanical Arts, between Science and Technology and between Management and Labour.
3.20 In addition to absorbing ‘to wit’, ‘know’ has also absorbed the meaning of ‘can’ as in ‘know how’ or ‘can do’. It also retains its root meaning of to know by acquaintance, i.e., by experience. Thus in English one verb carries at least four distinct meanings – to know by the senses, to know by the mind, to know by the doing and to know by experience. In German, by contrast, there are separate verbs for each meaning. The competitiveness implications of this semantic economy is arguably evident in the contrast between the tertiary educational structure in Germany with its wide spread pattern of industrial apprenticeship programs and technical universities and their relative absence in English-speaking Canada (Economic Council 1992). My personal interpretation is rooted in a perceived English language bias
44
reflected in the expression: Gentlemen don’t work with their hands. By contrast, and based on personal observation, in both Germany and Sweden where a linguistic distinction between different ways of knowing is preserved, the expression would be: One is judged by how well one does something, not by what it is that one does. Thus linguistic differences reflect cognitive differences in the meaning of ‘to know’ with potentially significant competitiveness implications.
3.21 Second, if closely related languages such as French, German and Scandinavian use different verbs for different senses of ‘to know’, then one can reasonably conclude they possess many nouns of subtle meaning not available in English. These meanings have become lumped together in English into a single word ‘knowledge’ that has become numinous with purpose but confusing due to its multiple meanings.
3.22 If one extends this English etymological economy to more distant languages using scripts other than the Roman alphabet, then the distinct and subtle differentiations of ‘knowledge’, e.g., in Cantonese, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, Thai, etc., may simply not be capable of translation. It becomes ‘local’ knowledge specific to a nation and available only for domestic exploitation in a knowledge-based economy. All polymorphous forms and linguistic expressions of ‘knowledge’ are raw inputs (and final consumer goods) in a knowledge-based economy. Given the rate at which human languages are becoming extinct, however, many subtle meanings of ‘knowledge’ are lost every year, perhaps forever. (Sampat 2001)
3.23 Three, two relevant but disconnected etymological findings need to be reported. The first set concerns the relationship between ‘knowledge’, ‘ignorance’, ‘belief’ and ‘opinion’. Ignorance is quite simply “the want of knowledge” (OED, ignorance, 1a). And if ‘knowledge’ derives from reason then ‘belief’ derives from some other faculty yet is held with emotional certainty (OED know, v., 10a). Similarly, while opinion may derive from reason or other faculties it is held as a probability, not a certainty (OED opinion, n., 1a). The second set of observations involves the fact that the OED defines economy, economist and econometrician but not economics. Economy is defined as management of the household and an economist as the manager of that household. Econometrics is defined as application of mathematics to economic data or theories. While economics is not formally defined, political economy is: “originally the art or practical science of managing the resources of a nation so as to increase its material prosperity; in more recent use, the theoretical science dealing with the laws that regulate the production and distribution of wealth” (OED, economy, 3).
3.24 In my reading there emerge four primary meanings for ‘to know’: (i) by the senses; (ii) by the mind; (iii) by doing; and, (iv) by experience. All four are reconciled in the individual human being and organically interact therein, e.g., some people read best (know by the mind) when they can physically handle a text (know by the senses) rather than simply see it on a computer screen. Each sense, in turn, generates demand for final knowledge-based goods and services. In this economic perspective, no aesthetic,
45
moral, philosophic or scientific filters are applied except by the individual him or herself, i.e., taste does not matter and thus one person’s pleasure may indeed be another person’s pain. What matters is that a human want, need or desire ‘to know’ exists and thereby an economic opportunity is created for producers of goods and services to satisfy that need. I will examine each in turn.
3.25 The physical senses of taste, touch, sight, sound and smell are the elemental means by which an organism knows its external environment and the state of its internal health. Ontologically, external stimuli affecting one or more of these senses tend to combine, over time and through experience, to form patterns recognized by the individual as being pleasurable or painful. Phylogenetically, pre-programmed recognition of such patterns may eventually become engrammed into the genetic code of the species itself. At the level of the senses, an organism wants to know pleasure and avoid pain. From this elemental analysis one can deduce that in human culture pleasure industries will have evolved to satisfy the need to know pleasure. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll are contemporary examples as well as the perfume and food industries. Of course, knowledge of short-term pleasure may have costs that cannot be fully assessed by the senses alone, e.g., long-term physical or moral debilitation.
3.26 In this regard, aesthetics, custom and morality play a more critical role than law in defining what is too much or goes too far. For example, if one considers pornography and obscenity in English-speaking societies, the Christian past steps boldly forward as ‘community standards’. These limit what an artist may express without fear of criminal prosecution. And what are the heresies in contemporary English-speaking societies? Generally, expression of sexual and scatalogical functions of the human body - created in the image of God. Yet images offensive in English-speaking Christian culture may be symbols of God's glory in others, e.g., full-penetration displayed in paintings or sculpture in Hindi temples. What is Christian sin (and until recently crime) may be Buddhist or Islamic virtue, and, of course, vice versa. Failure to respect such tacit social constraints has doomed many international business ventures.
3.27 The physical senses thus exhibit acute subjectivity, e.g., what is hot to you may feel cold to me. Perhaps the most significant social contribution of the Scientific Revolution was scientific instruments that measures physical sensations – touch, tastes, smells, sights and sounds at levels of perception at, above, below and beyond our genetic endowment - without intermediation by any human subject – be he or she poet, playwright, philosopher or Pope. Thus while it may be hot for you and cold for me, the thermometer objectively tells us both that it is 20 degrees Celsius. This development has had an immense metaphysical effect on Western culture. Before the Scientific Revolution, truth and certainty were the domain of reason (logic) or revelation (religion); afterwards, at least with respect to the physical world, they became the domain of the machine.
46
3.28 Mind is defined as the:
seat of awareness, thought, volition, feeling, and memory; cognitive and emotional phenomena and powers considered as constituting a presiding influence; the mental faculty of a human being (esp. as regarded as being separate from the physical); (occas.) this whole system as constituting a person's character or individuality. (OED, mind, n, 1, IV, 19a)
This roughly corresponds to the obsolete meaning of ‘wit’ as the: “seat of consciousness or thought, the mind.” (OED, wit, n, I, 1).
3.29 In a way, ‘mind’ is the secular expression of ‘soul’ or Descartes ‘ghost in the machine’. Whether it is a divine spark or an epiphenomenon of brain structure resulting from circular causality, mind exists on a cognitive plane different than that of the physical senses. It relies on “inner (inward) or ghostly” senses’ (OED, wit, n, I, 3) captured by the equally obsolete word ‘inwit’ meaning, alternatively, ‘conscience or inward sense of right and wrong’ or, ‘reason, intellect, understanding; wisdom’ (OED, inwit, 1 & 2a).
3.30 As with the five outer or physical senses, each of the five inward senses – conscience, reason, intellect, understanding and wisdom – create wants, needs and desires to know. In turn this creates an economic opportunity for knowledge-based goods and services to satisfy such needs including the education, spiritual, self-help and science industries.
3.31 If to know by the senses derives from the original meaning of ‘to know’ and to know by the mind from ‘wit’ then to know by doing derives from ‘can’. Quoting Richard Feynman, Baird notes: “What I cannot create I do not understand” (Baird 2004, 113). Knowing by doing, however, involves the tacit knowledge of performance. [B] The classic example in the philosophies of science and technology is use of a hammer (Heidegger 1927; Polanyi 1962a, 174-75). This involves praxis or the “practice or exercise of a technical subject or art, as distinct from the theory of it” (OED, praxis, 1a). Such knowledge cannot be fully codified. Often, however, it can be demonstrated through apprenticeship programs and master classes. Even in the most advanced natural and engineering sciences much knowledge can be attained only through doing. This, for example, was the experience of Cambrosio in his investigation of hybridomas technology (Cambrosio & Keating 1988, 249). [C]
3.32 To know by experience encompasses and overlaps all three previous meanings – to know by the senses, by the mind and by doing. Experience involves memory and therefore pattern recognition. To know by the senses means, among other things to: “perceive (a thing or person) as identical with one perceived before” (OED, know, v, I, 1). It also means to be acquainted or familiar with (OED. know, v, II, 5) including sexual knowledge (OED, know, v, II, 7). Further, it means to “have learnt by committing to memory” (OED, know, v, III, c).
3.33 With respect to ‘knowing by the mind’, an obsolete meaning of ‘mind’ is “the faculty of memory’ (OED, mind, n, 1, 2). And as
47
for ‘to know by doing’, this generally involves practice and repetition that forms memories (bundles of neuronal connexions) in the case of mental effort and conditioned reflexes of nerves and muscles in the case of physical effort, e.g., learning how to ride a bicycle.
3.34 All four meanings co-exist in each individual human being. Each, however, generates distinct and sometimes conflicting wants, needs or desires to know. Each, therefore, offers distinct economic opportunities for producers to satisfy such wants.
3.35 Collectively, the balance or blend of these ways of knowing constitutes our first knowledge qubit, the WIT. It is a qubitic or four-fold measure of ways of knowing in the English language, i.e., by the Senses, Mind, Doing and Experience.
3.36 Given the importance of language in theories of knowledge, e.g., Logical Positivism, the WIT is, by definition, a limited English language construct. In other languages there are probably senses of ‘to know’ expressed in English only with great difficulty, if at all. The Logical Positivists attempted to overcome this problem by restricting themselves to the language of mathematics. Mathematics, however, is a subset of language, not the other way around.
3.0 To Know Knowledge
[A] “Mr. James Ward, in Encycl. Brit. XX. 49 s.v. Psychology, assigns to the word two main meanings: ‘To know may mean either to perceive or apprehend, or it may mean to understand or comprehend... Thus a blind man, who cannot know about light in the first sense, may know about light in the second, if he studies a treatise on optics.’ Others hold that the primary and only proper object of knowing is a fact or facts (as in our sense 10), and that all so-called knowing of things or persons resolves itself, upon analysis, into the knowing of certain facts about these, as their existence, identity, nature, attributes, etc., the particular fact being understood from the context, or by a consideration of the kind of fact which is usually wanted to be known about the thing or person in question. Thus, ‘Do you know Mr. G.?’, ‘Do you know Balliol College?’ have different meanings according to the kind of facts about Mr. G. or Balliol College, which are the objects of inquiry.” (OED, know, v, Signification 2003)
[B] “The conceptual framework of applicable knowledge is different from that of pure knowledge. It is determined primarily in terms of the successful performances to which such knowledge is relevant. Take hammering again. This performance implies the conception of a hammer, which defines a class of objects that are (actual or potential) hammers. It will include, apart from the usual tools of this kind, rifle butts, shoe heels and fat dictionaries, and establish at the same time a grading of these tools according to suitability. The suitability of an object to serve as a hammer is an observable property, but it can be observed only within the framework defined by the performance it is supposed to serve.” (Polanyi 1962a, 175)
[C] “At the beginning of this study, Cambrosio undertook a comparison of several different experimental protocols for the production of hybridomas. He had not yet been able to attend a fusion experiment but relied, to a great extent, on his previous biological training. While one might expect that it would be relatively easy to determine variations between the protocols, this was true only in a “mechanical” or literal sense; to the untrained eye, the protocols appeared to be arbitrary lists of instructions lacking any overall
48
sense. The situation changed fundamentally when he was able to attend a training session in the technique. Once these instructions were embodied in a series of gestures, they became confounded with other factors such as the manual skills of a given person or that person’s degree of familiarity with a piece of equipment. The comparison between protocols now became possible, each line of instruction evoking shapes, colors, time spans, and gestures that could be compared.” (Cambrosio & Keating 1988, 249)
49
The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy