Leap into the void

Some years ago I went to an exhibition of Yves Klein's art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. I loved it. He patented his own colour International Klein Blue (IKB). This is it:

Klein tried to make his audience experience a state where an idea could simultaneously be "felt" as well as "understood"

This concept interests me. I was talking with my Design Research class about Epistemology - especially the idea of different ways of knowing:distinguishing between theoretical reason (knowing that) and practical reason (knowing how) - epistemology is concentrates on theoretical knowledge.

Here's an interesting thing:

Apparently English is one of the few languages that doesn't have a way of distinguishing between these two ways of 'knowing'

In French, for example, to know a person is 'connaître', but if you know how to do something is 'savoir'. In Italian the verbs are 'conoscere' and 'sapere' and the nouns for 'knowledge' are 'conoscenza' and 'sapienza'.

In German it is "kennen" and "wissen." "Wissen" is about knowing something to be a fact, where as "kennen" is knowledge as in being acquainted or having a working knowledge of a subject…

I wonder if the emphasis we place of 'experience' is a consequence of the linguistic twist. The assumption is that we 'know' because we have known. People who are certain in their 'knowledge' are trapped in the past.

Having questions is more important than having answers. Knowledge that doesn't lead to insights or wisdom.

So the question isn't just how do you know but also how do you know you know and what kind of knowledge is it?

Leapt into a void recently?

Comments

Addict-o-matic

A cool resource for you to try. Aggregates search topics from a number of sources. Thanks to Brand DNA (again) for the heads-up.

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer

ThoughtSpurs

Search This Blog