The word to know we use it extensively in our language to designate the wisdom, the knowledge that someone has in a subject, topic or science.
Knowledge and wisdom that a person has on a topic or subject
“His knowledge has no limits.”
When someone knows something, that is, they have learned knowledge, they will be able to make correct and useful decisions that would be practically impossible without that knowledge.
A human capacity with great value
Undoubtedly, knowledge is an intrinsic characteristic of the human race, which has been approached from different perspectives of physical and social science.
The provision of knowledge has a very relevant value in our society because it is precisely they who will be able to open the doors to a better future; knowledge, as we said, takes us out of ignorance but also gives us the ability to solve problems in a satisfactory way.
A person can achieve knowledge, that is, knowledge about something, through his experience, that is, from contact with what is known, through the education received, that is, he acquires through the teaching that someone gives him the practical and theoretical knowledge of a topic or reality.
It should be noted that living beings obtain knowledge and knowledge regarding our environment thanks to faculties such as: vegetative, sensitive and rational.
Meanwhile, in human beings, the rational faculty produces knowledge by concepts, making language viable and also consciousness about what is true.
It is worth mentioning that this knowledge via concepts is only viable in men by the faculty of understanding.
Now, experience also gives us human beings knowledge and knowledge, although it is a rather subjective knowledge of the one who provides the experience.
By case, it will be true for the one who lives it.
The main difference with the knowledge by concepts that we mentioned above lines is that the concepts being immaterial, therefore independent of experience, are per se an obvious information.
Sources of knowledge
Knowledge will always develop in a context, such is the case of the culture of a certain society and may come from various sources: intuition (the knowledge that comes to us immediately from contact with the object), experience (knowledge results from the experience one goes through), tradition (knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation), authority (when the knowledge starts from a reference source in political, moral, scientific matters) and science (the series of rational, true and possible knowledge that is obtained in a methodical way).
Knowledge is a constant activity typical of individuals and therefore we are absorbing and processing the information we obtain from our environment all the time.
The apprehension of knowledge will involve various complex cognitive processes such as: perception, sensation, conceptualization, language, communication, deduction, association, among others.
Epistemology is the discipline that deals with studying knowledge
To epistemology It is the study of knowledge, since it is the branch of philosophy that precisely deals with it.
This science is a detachment from Philosophy and therefore the theme of knowledge, always, since millennia, was present and occupying man and philosophy.
It has been precisely the classical and most popular philosophers who took particular care to explain and analyze what the process of knowledge of men is like.
Knowledge for Plato and Aristotle
So it is that two icons of Philosophy such as Plato and Aristotle approached this issue from their own beliefs.
Plato spoke of an ideal world that was represented by ideas and that supposes the real and true, while the other world, the sensible, is a representation of that reality that does not suppose the authentic in any way, but quite the opposite.
And for his part, Aristotle, distinguishes between essence, substances and accidents, proposing a more realistic vision of knowledge.
Over time, other philosophers were advancing in the considerations such as Immanuel Kant who will speak of stages in the apparatus of knowledge of man.
The opposing concept is that of ignorance, which implies the absence of knowledge regarding a question, subject or science.
Other uses
And also the word know is used extensively in our language to refer to various issues or situations such as: having the news or the certainty of something, being specialized in some subject, having a skill, as a synonym of resignation, having cunning , the flavor that something shows, when one thing resembles another, it reminds us of something.
