Towards a Theory of Knowledge

His account of dynamical knowing, in which knowledge of the world and knowledge of oneself evolve together, is set out under Cognitive Enablement. Here the question is broader: what knowledge itself is.

He distinguishes knowing, which works through abstraction, from seeing, in which a person grasps a situation and their own place in it at once. And he describes a double dynamic. Societies have grown by moving from experience to knowledge, turning what people lived through into codified knowledge. Sustainable evolution now also needs the reverse movement, from knowledge back into experience, so that what is known becomes lived.

The same thinking runs through his account of the forms knowledge takes. Information, explanation and practice models are different things; a practice model, drawn from how capable people actually work, is knowledge built to be used. Beyond the external sciences of the world lie the inner sciences of the person, and beyond description lie further modes of knowing: seeing, becoming and, in the Vedantic tradition he draws on, oneness.

• Knowing and seeing Understanding through abstraction, versus grasping a situation and one’s own place in it.
• Reflexive knowledge Knowledge that includes the knower, and changes as the knower changes.
• The double dynamic From experience to knowledge, and from knowledge back into experience.
• Information and practice models Knowledge that describes, versus knowledge built from how capable people actually work, so that others can use it.
• Modes of knowing Description, seeing, becoming and oneness.

AI can now produce descriptions of the world faster and more fully than any person. What it cannot do is the knowing that changes the knower. A theory of knowledge for the age of AI has to account for the kinds of knowing that machines do not replace: seeing, becoming, and knowledge that a person has made their own.

• 2004Enabling Knowledge: knowledge that raises a community’s capacity to absorb new information.
• 2005Forms of knowledge set out in the Enablement Thinking book draft.
• 2009Beyond Information Overload: access to knowledge has exploded without a matching growth in learning or contribution.
• c. 2011The double dynamic of evolution, from experience to knowledge and back.
• 2019Exploring Vivekananda’s Perspectives on Knowledge, in Vedanta.
• 2021Modes of knowing.
• 2026Towards a Theory of Knowledge; The Role of Knowledge in Human Evolution.

Illumine’s Karmayogi programmes build libraries of practice models: knowledge drawn from how the most capable frontline staff actually handle situations, made usable by others in the same roles. The KfE Ladder sets out the steps from information that can be accessed to knowledge that lets people rebuild how they see their work and themselves.