The 12 Temptations of Knowledge

8. The intuitive appeal of regarding knowledge as a concept lies in a tempting belief that what’s true is true. But knowledge is contextual in every possible way. For example, across the decades, the internet has proven that knowledge is inextricably tied up with cultures, values, languages, history, and on and on. So, yes, in every culture a clear sky is blue, except in cultures that don’t recognize blue and have divergent ideas about what the sky is. But everyone who has done business across borders already understands the impact of culture on what we, and they, take as settled knowledge.  

9. It’s tempting to think that knowledge is mental stuff, but only because of the relatively modern idea that body and mind are radically separated, as Descartes thought. As the extended mind philosophers point out, we, in fact, learn through external, physical extensions to our mind, such as books, calculators … and AI. 

10. Our bodies reach even deeper into knowledge, as the idea of embodied knowledge makes clear. It points to how much of our knowledge consists of know-how which we often can only struggle to explain in words, such as exactly how to steer your body down a busy city sidewalk. Our bodies know this, but our brains can’t express it fully or precisely.  

11. It’s tempting to think of a scientist conceptualizing an experiment and then performing it as engaging in two steps. But the work of the French philosopher Bruno Latour has shown how deeply and thoroughly a scientist is affected by a network of equipment, institutional protocols, social relationships, unpredictable events, and more. Latour thought knowledge was constructed by such networks, including the nonhuman elements of it.  

12. The tempting assumption that there’s only one kind of knowledge doesn’t hold up. The more closely you look, the more kinds you see, each with its own rules and purposes. The rules of knowledge in a courtroom are tightly defined but are very different than the rules of knowledge when bird-watching or for football referees rendering judgment about ball placement.

It all makes you wonder why we ever came to think that knowledge is only one thing, worthy of a single name.