Re. the 'we know more than we can say', here is Nabokov on the subject:

"I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more."

Hi Dave,
Is their approach simply not one of a perpective on complexity? Many people battle with complexity and paradox and have to reduce the world to categories in order to make sense of things. This is not a judgement or a criticism of them but simply a recogntition that they see things differently.

The real criticism is that they claim the ONLY correct way of seeing things. This, to me, is a big problem and has certainly done much damage in business and to KM in exactly the same way that many "silver bullet" management guru books have done to the practise of management and leadership.

Fully agree with you Bigskeptic. Nothing wrong with categorisation in context (English Rugby supporters for example) provided we don't believe it is the sum total of reality.

Categorisation is done through decision-making and vice versa. There’s a saying that the person who never made a mistake never made anything. G K Chesterton is purported to have said if a thing's worth doing it's worth doing badly. While the latter quote is often looked on as the defence of the amateur, it strikes at the humanness of making the move to do something. The fear of making a mistake is a fundamental attribute of all higher thinking living creatures and is a major reason why a would-be poet may never write or a would-be artist may never paint.

James K Baxter, in his exposition “The Fire and the Anvil”, describes the enigmatic position of the writer between the Fire (desire to rise to expression) and the Anvil (the damning critics). An antagonistic tug-of-war often exists between these forging opponents that may or may not bring an artistic work into being.

I use examples within the creative disciplines here for what also springs to mind are so many celebrated works by artists who didn’t navel-gaze about what others might think or say. But many more examples like those can be plucked from other disciplines, such as Science.

But the paradox discussed is more than just the decision to categorise or not - or even how categorisation must be done if that's the choice. Accepting Science as a valid discipline, for instance, centres on admitting that no model is implicit. To date, Science has never found an absolute model and an absolute model presupposes categorisation. Yet Science could hardly exist without models and the knowledge of Science is based on an understanding of these.

Occam’s Razor has been used to simplify models, and not just in Science. Based on the simplest-is-best principle, it discards detail that potentially defines a hierarchy of more refined models. So much of the practical use of explicit models relies on how keenly Occam’s Razor is applied. Associated decisions have to be made in doing this that amount to categorising.

The application of a suitable gas law model to predict the behaviour of gas volume under the parameters temperature and pressure is such a case in point. The simplest model varies from reality when changes to the parameters are significant. Depending how close to reality the model needs to be, however, a whole hierarchy of refinements to the original gas model can be selected by choice (categorisation). Of course, within that hierarchy there has never been a model that explains all behaviours under every condition. For this reason an arbitrary choice must be made on how close the required prediction must match reality. It comes down to the very human issue of choosing what is acceptable.

When is a poem not a poem
And verse runs into prose?
When is a home not a home
And strife contemptuous grows?

The Differential Calculus
Defines the least derivative
Of increments too small for us
In subtle terms definitive,

But the myriad seeds of change that fall
By each gradation's measure
Differentiate the large from tall,
The enjoyment from the pleasure;
If this sonnet is not proved true,
I've never judged, nor yet have you.

Dave - I remember, when I was still working at E&Y so it was a while ago, suggesting on the old Yahoo! Group ACT-KM mailing list that same metaphor - i.e. that knowledge is simultaneously and paradoxically both a thing and a flow, a reference to wave-particle duality in physics. The idea was quickly shot down. It’s nice to know after all this time that you have used that same metaphor too. Bah humbug to the lot of them I say!

Hi again Dave,

I have no problem with the idea that knowledge can be regarded as a thing or a flow. The problems start for me in the transition to the wave-particle model.

In physics this model evolved to explain the paradoxical properties of energy/matter in behaving as a wave/particle. Like most hybrid models it is only a best fit. The similarity of this model to the knowledge paradox lies in the proposal that knowledge may be regarded as a thing or a flow. So far so good.

The energy and matter that Bohr or Rutherford examined had the same properties that they manifest today. Only the technology to observe these has evolved over time. As well, technological development has not changed the phenomena that the models were invented to explain, though it has permitted energy and matter to be observed more closely so that more is now known about them. This created a need to find other models to explain the now observable behaviours. Through all this, however, energy and matter did not change.

But knowledge is evolving, as is technology. Their simultaneous growth brought about a need for change in the way knowledge is regarded, used and managed. With these developments also come social advances and practices that now and in the future will rely on technology to disseminate the plethora of evolving knowledge, however it is defined.

The physics wave-particle model is now being borrowed for possible use in a knowledge context. While it may still not fit its first purpose as closely as physicists would like, it is worse than second-best when used in the knowledge context. Further, there is a danger that this now second-hand model, rather than the phenomenon itself, may drive the thinking to do with knowledge and knowledge management.

It is significant that the wave model and the particle model in physics were both developed more or less independently. This “third thing” you refer to was not necessarily a direct development from the other two, though they certainly provided platforms for further work.

Perhaps it’s best to stay with a thing and a flow and develop the model from there. Or invent a new one when knowledge and how it is being used are more fully understood.

Perish the thought of any idea of quantising knowledge.

Hi –

Thanks for the hilarious post!

That this ridiculous ACT-KM debate is still going on is beyond belief.

In an era when Microsoft is writing $500M checks to tongue-pierced, Masala chai-drinking 20-somethings in San Francisco’s South-of-market neighborhood for their social graphs, and this debate still rages, is a testimony to profound dysfunction of KM in general and ACT-KM in particular.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graphs

I for one am embarrassed at ever being in ACT-KM. I waited far too long to excuse myself from its nonsense.

I am grateful to you for forwarding it along in a more civilized format.

-j

Ken - I don't think I am borrowing the model, other than as an illustration. The point is that depending on your perspective knowledge can be a thing or a flow (and they also developed as separate theories). The apparent paradox is not a problem, any more than wave-particle is for physics.

Thanks John.

Civilized format? Not verse I presume. Verse is metaphor. Obviously didn’t work. For me, wave-particle didn’t either.