Your essay is interesting, the pictures however distract a bit.

I’m sorry but perhaps I haven’t comprehended the main point of your exposition. If the purpose of it was to outline different aspects and features of both of what is known and the means by which it is known, then all of this can be found in any students study skills manual. You should study the chapters on brainstorming, reading, skimming, paraphrasing and note taking and you will find all that you have talked about. There are also pointers about concentration, attention and comprehension and how to improve them

“Knowledge” is a word that has a process/product ambiguity, ie both what is known and also how it is known. But how what is known is known has nothing to do with the psychology of the knower but with the method used to establish the knowledge. Scientific method and the analytic methods of other ordered disciplines make up the rationality by which knowledge of all kinds is established

That brings me to your treatment of certainty. Two points: mathematics deals with a certainty that is distinct from the provisional certainty and probability of scientific knowledge-you need to be very careful about maths and especially in the way in which it used in empirical theories. An example is the mathematical modelling of theories and the use of probability theory in scientific theorising.

The second and more important point is that there has to be a reference point in talk about certainty and that reference point cannot be uncertain. If this point was also held to be uncertain, then you wouldn’t be able to make sense of the uncertainty you attribute to knowing and knowledge. That necessary reference point, is the method of knowing. Even if some aspects of method change over time talk of uncertainty about method is unwarranted because of its special status as reference point

I would also like to warn you about your use of “certainty”. You seem to slide from the obvious principle that all scientific knowledge is relative to what is presently established and therefore always open to revision, to a use of the word that has Cartesian overtones

Analytic knowledge and the analytic frame of mind is an ideal type that we try to encourage people to adopt but usually with mixed success. Present university graduands are a prime example, they are excellent at information processing but for the whole their analytic skills are underdeveloped. That’s not their fault but the way universities now impart knowledge.

I make the point about ideal types because your quadrants and your theory about knowledge development are ideal in the sense that those types of knowledge are only partly realised. You aim to realise that type and you usually do with various levels of success

    Horst Rainer Imberger

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    Former university teacher, social democrat with conservative tendencies and critical interests in just about everything