Thoughts on levels of knowledge

I frequently capture photographs using a smartphone. One just needs to tap on the object, the phone does a lot of intelligent work, adjusting all the variables, and a simple click often results in a great picture which can be shared on social media. Further modifications can be done through the use of editing software or filters.

But, when the lighting is low and conditions are outside the comfort zone of the phone camera, the outcome is not as good. The resulting image is often poorly focussed and poorly lit. Neither the equipment has more controls, nor do I know better ways to improve the outcome. All I can think of in those times is that a powerful camera and a more capable photographer would have captured a better picture. Suddenly, the shortcomings of my knowledge become apparent.

Despite having clicked hundreds of good pictures from my phone, what can be said about my knowledge of photography? This question initiated a chain of thought following which led me to wonder about the nature of my knowledge on any subject.

The dictionary definition of knowledge is that it is awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Yet, this definition doesn’t talk about the extent or quality of awareness. When can we say that we know something? There are times, where something that we thought was known to us, reveals a deeper level of information, leaving us questioning the fundamentals of our knowledge.

After a few hours of journey on this thought train, I was stuck. My only conclusion was that we cannot ever know anything completely. Our knowledge is always partial. Once I reached this conclusion, I was unable to move forward, at times thinking, this is it.

Whenever I’m stuck, one question that I find useful to think about is: what is the right question to ask in this situation?

In this situation, I thought the right question was: are there different levels of knowledge that we pass through when moving towards knowing more about something?

I reflected hard on this question, thinking about my skills and domains of knowledge, and then thinking about the path in more general terms. I imagined a hierarchy of levels, which could be applied to different kinds of knowledge. Let’s explore it through the image below:

Let me describe each of the stage:

1. Unexamined behaviour: In this stage most of out behaviour is picked from Imitation without much sensitivity to the quality of the output. We could be producing outputs consistently within a defined range of work but we do not have sufficient idea to evaluate the quality of our output.
2. Knowing the terminology: In this stage, we acquire the ability to talk the language thereby gaining the ability to expose ourselves to pick up knowledge from outside (mentors/books/peers etc). This marks our understanding of basic concepts and formation of perception towards the quality of work.
3. Seeing it closely: Till stage two, there is some unexamined behaviour combined with some basic understanding of concepts. In stage three, by seeing the action up close, mainly through hands on work, a deeper understanding of concepts emerges and modifies one’s behaviour. The knowledge and concepts learned in previous stages are made more tangible, and more dots start to connect towards a deeper understanding.
4. Creating: Everything that we’ve learned till stage 3: knowledge, understanding, and application of concepts get tested thoroughly when we create something. One might fail multiple times before one gets through. This is the stage when intense action and a lot of learning (may not be in explicit form) take place.
5. Understanding principles deeply: After a successful/unsuccessful attempt to create, we are able to see that our past knowledge was continuously being modified by intense action. We reflect back on our experiences to understand and make explicit what we learned during the period of intense action.
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   I think that most of our lives we keep repeating stage 1 to 5 multiple times, emerging each time with a renewed persona. So, there will be very few examples of transitioning to another stage, which is:
6. Creating new complexity: In this stage we create something the nature of which was previously unknown to the world. Something like an invention. This will get studied and used in the future till the time someone else crosses stage 5 and creates new complexity out of it.