Knowledge has traditionally been understood as the body of ideas, insights, conclusions, and models that shape human behaviour tacitly and explicitly.
Over the centuries knowledge has been classified in multiple ways.
In the Western world, knowledge has been understood in terms of philosophy (how to live and why things are what they are); science (primarily a description of what things are, why things are the way they are and the capacity to predict behaviour of the world around us); technology (how to get things done better, faster, with more productivity and value creation); context knowledge (a description of the specific dimensions or areas of human exploration or are facing certain challenges).
In the Indian tradition, knowledge has been classified into para vidya (higher knowledge or the study of consciousness), and apara vidya (the study of the visible material world).
However, we appear to be entering a new phase of human history where the definition and architecture of knowledge itself is transforming.
At the heart of this transformation is the shift from a dominant Western vision of knowledge as objective and an independent, Indian and spiritual vision of knowledge as subjective, to a new evolved vision of knowledge that is both objective and subjective interacting in a reflexive dynamic. In a sense this new “reflexive knowledge” is distinct from both objective and subjective knowledge and lives in the dynamic between what is known and what is becoming.
What is known is the past, the accumulation of all knowledge from the past. What is becoming is the present-future – in it knowledge is being generated afresh based on the interaction between human being and the world around.
We have to dive deep into this reflexive knowledge. In it lies the answer to an integration of mind and matter, objective and subjective, knowing and doing, and our aims and their fulfillment.