Sunday, July 3, 2011

Knowing

Man (the subject) tries to know everything around him (the objects). But what is "knowing"? "Knowing" something could mean the following things

- what are the properties that distinguish that object, that make it a separate "object" worth study. For e.g. once you have studied and listed down properties of an animal say "deer", then there is no point studying other deers, in so far as to "know" the "deerness" part of them.
- "knowing" the properties helps one understand/know how that object would behave under different scenarios.
- it also helps to "know" where this object came from and where it is headed towards, as also why, how & when it came into being i.e. in case of an animal - its evolutionary cycle.
- based on all this "knowing" helps to categorize - the human way of systematizing knowledge e.g. so deers are mammals, of the class of vertebrates and so on...
- the human endeavor to "know" any object is generally to benefit from that knowledge. So "knowing" as a corollary may also extend to finding ways of putting this knowledge to practical use.

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