What is knowledge, and what is wisdom?

1. KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, &
THE WHY DIMENSION
1

2. Overview
• A personal quest
• Research interests
• Modelling knowledge
• Making sense of
Making sense with
• The Why Dimension
2
wisdom

3. A Personal Quest
• Undergraduate years – philosophy & politics
• Encounters with Buddhism – wisdom & method
• Retreat
o Wisdom in the natural world
o Living life as there’s no tomorrow; farming the land as if forever
• Re-entry
o The digital revolution
o Academia again – education; cognitive science; knowledge management
• Making (new) sense
o Digital learning
o Explorations into Why
3

4. Philosophy & Politics
• “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the
dusk” (Hegel)
• “I am weary of my wisdom, like the bee that hath gathered too much
honey; I need hands outstretched to take it” (Nietzsche)
• "Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble,
and in choosing the lesser evil” (Machiavelli)
• “To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove
things every day” (Lao Tzu)
4
But how to resolve the tension between
Fundamentalism & Relativism

5. Encounters with Buddhism
• Many philosophical schools, traditions & practices
• Cultivating insight & wisdom – with compassion
o Why? To achieve freedom from suffering
o Where? The Chenrezig Institute for Wisdom Culture (1974)
• Meditation techniques focused on motivation
o Why? To understand attachment; the nature of mind; causes of happiness
• Nagarjuna & Madhyamika – a Middle Way beyond dualistic
conceptions; abandoning belief & fixed concepts; wisdom in
uncertainty
• Zen – exposes limitations of discursive mind through paradoxes in
rational thought
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6. 6
Manjushri – discriminating wisdom, cutting through ignorance & delusion
c/f Schon (1987) “reflection in action”

7. Retreat
• Wisdom interpreted as ‘living simply’
o Interacting with nature
o The cycle of seasons
o Developing respect for the earth
o Discovering the challenge of being present
o A retreat from mainstream conventions
o Re-discovering older traditions
o Learning re-calibrated
o Acquisition of physical & practical skills
o Very little technology!
… but things change
7

8. 8
“A wise old owl sat in an oak.
The more he [listened], the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Why aren’t we like that wise old bird.”
Mother Goose

9. Every dog has his day
9

10. Re-entry
• Academia
o Music education
o Cognitive Science
o Knowledge management
• The digital revolution
o e-Learning & the shift to self-directed learning
o Emergence of a profoundly networked world
o Organisational disruption & re-focusing
o Unprecedented knowledge sharing
o Increasing volumes of data & information
o Demonstrates the success of “openness” agenda
10

11. A Question of Engagement
[The Internet is] …the single most mind-altering
technology that has ever come into general use …
when we go online, we enter an environment that
promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted
thinking, and superficial learning … The Net’s
cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious
and unconscious thought, preventing our minds
from thinking either deeply or creatively.
N. Carr, (2010). The Shallows
11

12. Research Interests
• Digital Learning
• Sense-Making
• Knowledge Modelling
• Inquiry-based Learning
• Indigenous knowledge
• Wellbeing
• The why dimension
o Asking
o Learning
o Understanding
o Knowing
o Explaining
12
why
Where does Wisdom fit?

13. 13
Some explanations

14. Sense-Making
14
• We all need to make sense of things (routinely)
– “structuring the unknown” (Weick)
– “a mandate of the human condition” (Dervin)
– Does not need to involve “meaning-making”
• Closely related to understanding
• Asking why is often integral to it
• Can involve reasoning, inference, & pattern recognition

15. Why Why?
• Why is fundamental to learning & making sense of things
• Knowing-why is important for practical wisdom (phronesis)
• Current digital technology doesn’t support it very well
• Significant gap in digital learning tools
• Google is smart, but it does not handle why questions well
… the “fast food paradigm” of inquiry
• Why seeks explanation more than information
• Why is ambiguous & multi-dimensional
• It invokes both reflection & dialogue
• The why dimension integral to a new frontier of innovation:
sense-making technologies
… and the world wise web?
15

16. 16
The Why Dimension

17. The Why Dimension
17
Involves five key activities associated with the word why and functions
in both reflective and dialogic contexts
• Asking why: is concerned with sense-making & critical thinking
• Learning why: invokes reasoning skills
• Understanding why: constructs plausible conceptualisations
• Knowing why: rationalises plausible conceptualisations
• Explaining why: enables dialogue & story; elaborates upon plausibility

18. 18
Modelling Knowledge

19. What’s wrong with this picture?
19

20. 23 March 2008 20
Source: M. D. Lytras & M. A. Sicilia (2005). The Knowledge Society – A
Manifesto for Knowledge and Learning, Int. J. Knowledge and Learning,
Vol. 1, Nos. 1/2, 2005. page 3 © Inderscience
http://www.inderscience.com/storage/f410121258637119.pdf

21. 21

22. 22

23. Information & Explanation
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24. Information & Explanation
• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why
• How
• If
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descriptive ‘primitives’ of
information retrieval
procedural or
rule-based ‘primitives’
conditional, motivational or
explanative ‘primitive’
Information
Processing
Knowledge
Construction &
Understanding

25. … “and the wisdom to know the difference”
Learning
Understanding which
Knowing
25
non-conceptual
conceptual
Discernment

26. Questions?
26

27. Reflection & Aspiration
… Hindsight … Insight … Foresight …
27
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