The exact meaning of the term “knowledge” and how we understand it in relation to its use on both an individual and on a social level is one of the most important questions raised in epistemology. It is a question which involves almost ways of knowing, as it involves a reflexive understanding of exactly what knowledge is. Indeed, without such an understanding it is even possible to argue that there could be no serious theory of knowledge at all. Although the status of knowledge itself varies from area to area, it is possible to understand that each must its own method of understanding itself, and the data that it produces.
In this sense, it is possible to argue that the knowledge is nothing other than the systematic organization of facts. At the same time, however, it is crucial to note that this method of organization is not the same across each area of knowledge. Rather, the above mentioned definition of knowledge must actually be expanded in order to take account of the fact that each method of organization contains a particular ideological component, and has a political and historical context. As such, it is not possible to say that knowledge is nothing more than the organization of information, but it is equally not possible to think of knowledge that does not involve such an organization. It is possible to show by focusing on the areas of knowing delineated by the disciplines of history and mathematics.
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"Knowledge is Nothing More than The Systematic Organization of Facts".
One obvious knowledge question which emerges in the study of history is whether or not the knowledge needs to be considered to be neutral and unbiased in order to be valuable. This is a question which can be seen to apply to my own life. For example, when I was younger it would frequently be the case that either myself or my siblings would misbehave and that, as a result of this, we would eventually be told that we needed to justify our behaviour to one of our parents. There were several occasions when I realized that although neither myself or my siblings were not lying about what had taken place on a particular occasion, we had different stories, and we had organized facts and events in particular way to generate the maximum amount of sympathy for ourselves. It was clear, therefore, that we could not have knowledge without different kinds of organization. This is something that was especially interesting for me, as growing up it was also the case that in school and in conversations with my parents, I would frequently be told that some things were simply right or wrong, and that one must always tell the objective truth.
This simple experience can be argued to lead to a further question relating to the status of knowledge would be whether or not it is possible to have a form of knowledge which did not feature a deliberate organization of knowledge into some form or other. This question can be addressed if one considers statements from revisionist historians such as Christopher Hill who, when considering the English Civil War insists that he is not interested in presenting as so-called neutral perspective, but that the aims to take “the worms eye view” (Hill, 1991, 7). Instead of arguing that he attempts to present a neutral perspective on knowledge, Hill argues that the study of history is, in may ways, also the study of different types or forms of knowledge and that every historical society has maintained a system of knowing that has organized information. It is this form of organization which enable the society to develop systems of knowledge, and that any meaningful study of history must be aware of its biases and influences and not attempt to claim that it is possible to have a kind of knowledge that could lie outside of this.
Despite this insistence, however, it is important to note that several people may comment that individuals such as Hill possess a specifically Marxist and communist ideology which colors their insistence on analyzing forms of the organization of knowledge. Such people would claim that it is only as a result of bias that Hill looks for bias. From my own perspective, it is also clear that it is not possible to entirely reduce historical narratives to structures of organization. For example, when considering the Cold War, something that is often thought of as being a largely ideological conflict, it is nonetheless the case that I can only understand by reference to particular historical events such a the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Vietnam. Such material historical facts exist over and above the way in which they are organized.
The suggestion of there being a necessarily ideological element to knowledge is presented in both the history of science and of economics. For example, when writing on the scientific systems and methods of the Ancient Egyptian civilization, Thomas Kuhn notes that the civilization was able to develop a functioning scientific understanding of the universe, but that this related directly to the geography of Egypt (Kuhn, 1957, 23). The study of history in this case is the study of the different methods by which information was organized and utilized and it seems to be clearly the case that it is not possible to conceive of a knowledge that could lie outside of this organization. Importantly, however, Kuhn does not argue that this mode of organization is necessarily deliberate. Rather, he suggests that it may be unconscious and that it is embedded within the very structure of society. This idea is also something that Karl Marx echoes when he argues that the violence of colonialism and of dispossession which marks the origins of capitalism in America and Europe are frequently left out of any histories of this period.
Rather than presenting an honest history, Marx argues that the violence of slavery and colonials is written in words of “blood and fire” on the underside of standard historical accounts (Marx, 1979, 601). Importantly, however, Marx does not argue that such historians have necessarily made a mistake, but he suggests that a necessary feature of the society that he is studying is the act of organizing information in this way. As such, one can that, at least with the case of history, it is not true to argue that knowledge is nothing more than the organization of information, as there are clearer wider historical and social forces at work in any particular kind of historical knowledge, but it can be argued that such an organization is a pre-condition of any kind of historical knowledge. I find that I cannot have any notion of structure or of causality if I do not place events within a framework whereby one thing can potentially affect and be used in order to interpret another thing. Indeed, if I did not have any framework then I would simply be left with a plain series of scientific statements and there would be no progress between one event to the next, and no necessary way of linking them.
A final question raised by this statement concerns whether mathematical knowledge, which contains no apparent connection to the world or to society, can be considered to be independent of the forms of organization which produce it. It is my own personal experience that when studying mathematics and in carrying out mathematical calculations, I have thought of the knowledge that gain as being objective, and even as being a-historical. When discovering mathematical truths, one is not simply applying a system of organization, but rather it seems easier to believe that one is unveiling a fact that will always be true, regardless of how it is organized. Indeed, it is this understanding of mathematics which is most often used in order to distinguish mathematical knowledge from historical or “subjective” knowledge.
Despite this apparent certainty, however, several philosophers have commented on the fact that not even mathematical knowledge can be taken to exist outside of a system of organization. For example, Kant argued that rather than revealing truths that can be taken to be true outside of the manner of their discovery, the majority of mathematical truths were simply explications of the nature of human perception, and were directly related to the necessity of thinking in space and time which marks all human thinking (Kant, 1996, 57). With this system of organization than not even the most evident mathematical knowledge would be possible. As such, it is again possible to argue that while it is not necessarily the case that all knowledge is nothing more than the systematization of information, it is not possible to have any kind of knowledge without such a process.
In conclusion, therefore, the examples of history and mathematics provide important insight into an understanding of the nature of knowledge. When considered individually, both areas of knowledge serve to show both that it is not possible to have a knowledge that does not involve some kind of system of organization. However, at the same time they also show that it is not possible to simply dismiss knowledge as nothing more than this organization. Rather it is the case that the method of organization by which information is synthesized and knowledge created can often be of vital importance for understanding both the political and the scientific conditions in which different areas of knowledge. It is for this reason that it is not correct to state categorically that knowledge is nothing more than systematization.
