Methods of obtaining knowledge - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Knowledge

Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...

may originate or be derived from the following origins or methods:

Observation
Observation
Observation is either an activity of a living being, such as a human, consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments. The term may also refer to any data collected during this activity...

or experience
Experience
Experience as a general concept comprises knowledge of or skill in or observation of some thing or some event gained through involvement in or exposure to that thing or event....

. This may be more or less sophisticated, ranging from a simple, "I saw" to carefully designed controlled experiment
Experiment
An experiment is a methodical procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. Experiments vary greatly in their goal and scale, but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results...

ation.
Reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...

or logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

. Taking other knowledge as data, by logical operations knowledge can be inferred
Inference
Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. The conclusion drawn is also called an idiomatic. The laws of valid inference are studied in the field of logic.Human inference Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions...

. For example the theoretical construct, the electron
Electron
The electron is a subatomic particle with a negative elementary electric charge. It has no known components or substructure; in other words, it is generally thought to be an elementary particle. An electron has a mass that is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton...

, is derived by logical inferences from observations and experiment. Such knowledge, being derivative, can not be better than the knowledge upon which it is founded.
- Modelling
  Mental model
  A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about his or her own acts and their consequences...
  
  a situation sometimes allows those with a hands-on viewpoint to learn how-to
  How-to
  A how-to or a how to is an informal, often short, description of how to accomplish some specific task. A how-to is usually meant to help non-experts, may leave out details that are only important to experts, and may also be greatly simplified from an overall discussion of the topic...
  
  do something. This pragmatic
  Pragmatism
  Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
  
  approach is often seen in computer programming
  Computer programming
  Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
  
  .
Testimony
Testimony
In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. All testimonies should be well thought out and truthful. It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on a Bible when taking an oath...

. Knowledge based on the acceptance of testimony involves accepting what others say. For example, I only know that Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

is a county of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, that the First World War was horrendous and that David Beckham
David Beckham
David Robert Joseph Beckham, OBE is an English footballer who plays midfield for Los Angeles Galaxy in Major League Soccer, having previously played for Manchester United, Preston North End, Real Madrid, and A.C...

earns $30 million per year because I have learned these things from other people. This seems to be a common way we get knowledge but is seen by philosophers as problematic. See Testimony, philosophical problems of.
- Authority
  Authority
  The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...
  
  . Knowledge based on authority may rely upon the reputation of an individual such as Aristotle
  Aristotle
  Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
  
  or Einstein
  Albert Einstein
  Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
  
  or perhaps on institutional authority such as that of the Roman Catholic Church
  Roman Catholic Church
  The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
  
  or Oxford University. Note that an authority may adopt knowledge upon other criteria such as divine revelation or observation as well as upon authority. Authority may have a political basis in the sense that some political process, perhaps involving status
  Political status
  In international law three categories of Political status are usually recognized:#Independent countries e.g.: France, Canada#Internal independent countries which are under the protection of another country in matters of defense and foreign affairs, e.g.: Netherlands Antilles, the Faroe Islands,...
  
  as well as simple voting, peer review
  Peer review
  Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
  
  , or comment. This is familiar to participants in academia
  Academia
  Academia is the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.-Etymology:The word comes from the akademeia in ancient Greece. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning...
  
  .
Revelation
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...

. Many people believe knowledge may be obtained via revelation or even divine revelation, which may be directly from God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

or another spirit, perhaps conveyed through a religious text or texts, such as the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

.

There is a view that all seeming knowledge is less than certain. Though individuals may feel a high degree of confidence in a seeming fact

Fact

A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is whether it can be shown to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts...

, this is not the same as certain knowledge, so much as a feeling or attitude. This is often demonstrated in courts of law, sometimes years after the fact of seeming evidence

Evidence (law)

The law of evidence encompasses the rules and legal principles that govern the proof of facts in a legal proceeding. These rules determine what evidence can be considered by the trier of fact in reaching its decision and, sometimes, the weight that may be given to that evidence...

. It is also demonstrated by history, in terms of strongly held beliefs that later lost credence, to be replaced by other beliefs (such as the movements of the planets, first being the activity of gods, then simply descriptions of their changing direction and circling the earth daily, and eventually an explanation {theory

Theory

The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...

} suggesting that they revolve about the sun.)

Knowledge of medicine, seen centuries later, also reveals that the "knowledge" was in fact knowledge of what had been said or written, and not knowledge of nature. Though we may feel that what we experience in the modern time is finally knowledge of nature, centuries in the future people may look back on what may be seen as 21st-century folly by that time, and the current day will not be considered "modern times."

Differences in religious faith also illustrates the difference between strongly held belief and certain knowledge. One may "know" that religious facts are written in a current document. He may believe it is an exact replica of what was written millennia ago. He may believe that what was originally written exactly reported on actual events of the time. He may believe that the events of the time demonstrated with certainty certain theological truths.

This is not exactly the same as knowing those things with certainty, other than that certain things are currently written. The fact that a person of a different religion may believe differently illustrates the uncertainty of all those facts other than that certain things are written.

See also