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Data, information, knowledge, wisdom

(See also the wikipedia entries on: the DIKW model and wisdom.)

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
  T. S. Eliot, The Rock (1934)

The sequence in brief: Features Data Information Knowledge Understanding Wisdom Being, transformation, enlightenment

Another sequence, by Frank Zappa: Information Knowledge Wisdom Truth Beauty Love Music

There is a sequence or hierarchy:

• Differences, features. These can be detected (sensed) but it is not known if they have regularity, let alone what they mean. These may be either noise or data; it is not yet determined.

• Data. Defined differences to which meaning may be attached. E.g. raw sensor data, before correction and transformation. These are created systematically, but we don't know enough about their generation to draw conclusions about their meaning.

• Information. This takes data, applies knowledge (e.g. knowledge of a previously established code), and delivers meaning. This is the information of information theory, of Dretske. It is essentially defined as what cuts down the choices from a pre-existing set of possible meanings. It is that which delivers us conclusions about the world.

• Knowledge.

• Belief. Belief is not part of this sequence, but part of a separate issue about doubt and who knows what. See the separate section below on belief.

• Understanding. This essentially, while never complete, means knowing the connections of a given item to numerous other perspectives, ideas, facts. Knowing not an isolated item, but its relationships to other things we know.

  Professor M.E. McIntyre: [something like] "I always tell my students that understanding means seeing it from more than one viewpoint, and making it all consistent: in words, equations, diagrams, pictures." (See also his ideas on lucidity.)

  Malcolm Gladwell: "The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter."

  But von Neumann: "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things, you just get used to them."

• Wisdom. Aristotle's Metaphysics defined wisdom as the understanding of causes. This would simply make it close to what educationalists would now call deep learning; and certainly what we call knowledge (not wisdom).

  Judgement: being able to function well with large amounts of uncertainty. Being able to make judgements that are correct, even though not grounded on exhaustive knowledge and understanding. If wrong they are prejudice and bigotry; if right they are wisdom. In fact the first thing you need to learn about a new area you are entering is the often unpublished, perhaps seldom spoken of, orientations and value judgements of the current practitioners. Without this, you cannot operate, you can't distinguish what you should learn and what you should ignore. We might call this wisdom too.

  At this point, we might suggest that wisdom is being right without comprehension: the opposite of Aristotle (but in line with the phrase "the wisdom of crowds", which is about how accurate the average of guesses can be even when non-one understands it).

  Essentially, then, the flavour of all the earlier steps in this progression is of building certainty from empirical sense data; but wisdom is referring to an ability to think and act successfully beyond this: when deduction is inadequate (uncertainties in the inputs), and/or when values or goals conflict with each other. Or perhaps, this is what Gladwell meant about understanding w.r.t. decision making.

  Larry Niven suggests that wisdom is knowledge plus the skill to use what you know. Taken literally that would just mean having both the theory and practice, both the declarative and the procedural aspects of something. But he probably meant (in the story context in which it appeared) something like the higher level strategic skill of knowing when to apply something, rather than how. For instance, almost all of us know how to keep quiet, and how to explain ourselves: but it's much more difficult to choose which of these is best to act on in every situation.

  This is exactly what Anderson, Krathwohl et al. mean by "metacognition" in their revision of Bloom's taxonomy. Their idea of what metacognitive knowledge is, is not just knowing a rule (having a skill) but knowing when and when not to apply it. Perhaps this is wisdom. The difference between the written law, and the decisions of a judge.

  Another take on this might say that wisdom is being able to select, not just a possible action, but the one that best satisfies many "passive" criteria as well e.g. will not only work but annoy the fewest, cost the least, be the least aesthetically offensive etc. Another aspect though is to recognise when simple ideas of low immediate "cost" should be ignored in favour of a change that while disruptive in the short term is better in the longer term.

  There is a psychology of wisdom [sample references are: Sternberg,R.J. (ed.) (1990) Wisdom: its nature, origins and development (New York: CUP) Staudinger,U.M. (1999) "Older and wiser? Integrating results on the relationship between age and wisdom-related performance" International journal of behavioral development vol.23 pp.641-664 ] Their take on wisdom is that it involves skill at reasoning around great uncertainty, on long time scales (not just short term solutions), around values (selecting, in a given problem, the issues that matter the most).

  "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." (William James)

  Or just this:
  "Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit." (Elbert Hubbard)

• Being, transformation, enlightenment. Possible extensions of the sequence.

  Being: the thought here is that beyond knowing skills (knowledge), and knowing when and when not to apply them (wisdom = metacognition), is the integration or incorporation of all that into a way of being that is also an identity. Lee Shulman speaks of this as a component of what is learned in a professional training or education (for law, medicine, etc.). This may mean an integration of one's values and impulses in line with one's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Your way of being / way of life; where your desires, goals, impulses are fully integrated and aligned with your actions and beliefs. This is an existential statement or view. And it seems to mark the end of learning, or of the need for significant further development.

Footnote

If this means anything, it might be about: (1) (not) knowing what we know or remember cf. being surprised we can remember something. (Issues of metamemory.) (2) A facet or consequence of the way we "know" things at two or three levels, which are usually but not entirely aligned in our minds. Examples of this include a) procedural (behavioural) knowledge vs. declarative (conceptual) knowledge; b) inconsistencies (recorded in studies of science concepts in school children) between behaviour, predictions, explanations; c) Activity Theory's distinction between Activities, Actions, Operations.

"Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom." - Jean Giraudoux
Perhaps this uses 'wisdom' in the metacognitive sense, but refers to cases where it is inaccurate.

Belief, knowledge, thought

• "Is" e.g. "Jane is my next door neighbour". This form expects the listener to agree or know and for there to be no argument about it, and no attention is paid to the possibility of some people not knowing it.
• "Know" e.g. "Pete knows Jane is my next door neighbour". Again, this form takes the stance that there is no question about truth; but now there is a question about who knows (believes) it. (The question is about knowing or not knowing, but not about believing the contrary.)
• "Belief": e.g. "Pete believes [or equally Pete thinks that] Jane is my next door neighbour". There is now a question about whether the proposition is true; and a question about who believes (thinks) it.
• "Wondered if" e.g. "Pete wondered if Jane is my next door neighbour". There is a question about whether the proposition is true; but no active question about who takes it as certain (no-one does).

Knowledge has been defined as true, justified, belief. But in actual English usage, from a Socratic perspective, and from a child development viewpoint, this is back to front. We say we know something when we hold a proposition we believe is true but are not thinking of any grounding or warrant for it. When its truth is in doubt, then we mark this by saying "believe": in ordinary discourse, we only say we "believe" something if we want to draw attention to the idea that it may be false, whereas if we are just taking something as given, we say "know". A very young child cannot grasp that other people may not know the same things as they do: when they start to be able to handle this, then we talk of them having acquired a "theory of mind"; i.e. of tagging things they know according to who else knows or believes them. It is sometimes claimed that those suffering from autism cannot do this (they can only know, not believe). In fact, to say we believe something is to say we are holding in mind a proposition whose truth or falsity we are able to reason about. In other words, we are able to think critically about it. This is knowledge plus doubt; and is more advanced than simply relying on propositions we are unable to question.

In general, then, "belief" marks going one step beyond knowledge, to a "theory of mind", "truth maintainence system", "reason maintainence system", "critical thinking". That is, not simply remembering facts i.e. what is true, but the reasons for believing it and/or who believes it.

In what way(s) does this matter?

However for me, this began with reading Dretske's book on what information was. The enduring point this left me with, was that the technical definitions of information (important in computing and in physics) particularly in communication are dependent on a pre-existing knowledge. Dots and dashes only mean something when sender and receiver have pre-agreed that they are using Morse code, and so on. So information is useless, or rather non-existent, without prior knowledge of the alternatives and of how these differences appear in the data.

If we consider the progression of stages data → information → knowledge → ... from left to right, then the right hand stage at each step extracts new value from the left, but only by virtue of assuming another kind of thing in advance. Essentially, then, the flavour of all the earlier steps in this progression is of building certainty from empirical sense data; a model of perception; "bottom up" construction. Yet it depends on pre-existing certainties, presupposed true but/and not tested or learned by the left to right flow. In this way the assumptions are like the knowledge vs. belief distinction: stances about what is being assumed at a given moment, rather than any absolute status.

There is a converse to this: whenever you have to learn not a new item, but a new field e.g. when you switch research fields or start learning a completely new subject, then what you as a learner most needs is a working set (however simplified) of these assumptions without which little can be done. This is a top down direction of travel or priority; and is one way of explaining the importance of teachers: not to communicate lots of data, but to install assumptions that allow learning to begin, and to progress efficiently. E.g. "don't run before you can walk", "don't bother looking at X it's beside the point", ... Installing these assumptions in a learner equips them, not with conclusions, but with the means to interpret and so self-teach the area.

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