Knowledge

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I. Essentials of Knowledge (../cathen/08673a.htm#I)

II. Kinds of Knowledge (../cathen/08673a.htm#II)
III. The Problem of Knowledge (../cathen/08673a.htm#III)

Knowledge, being a primitive fact of consciousness (../cathen/04274a.htm), cannot, strictly speaking, be defined; but
the direct and spontaneous consciousness of knowing may be made clearer by pointing out its essential and
distinctive characteristics. It will be useful first to consider briefly the current uses of the verb "to know". To say that I
know a certain man may mean simply that I have met him, and recognize him when I meet him again. This implies the
permanence of a mental (../cathen/10321a.htm) image enabling me to discern this man from all others. Sometimes,
also, more than the mere familiarity with external features is implied. To know a man may mean to know his character,
his inner and deeper qualities, and hence to expect him to act in a certain way under certain circumstances. The man
who asserts that he knows an occurrence to be a fact means that he is so certain of it as to have no doubt
(../cathen/05141a.htm) concerning its reality. A pupil knows his lesson when he has mastered it and is able to recite it,
and this, as the case may be, requires either mere retention in memory, or also, in addition to this retention, the
intellectual (../cathen/08066a.htm) work of understanding. A science (../cathen/13598b.htm) is known when its
principles, methods, and conclusions are understood, and the various facts and laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) referring
to it co-ordinated and explained. These various meanings may be reduced to two classes, one referring chiefly to
sense-knowledge and to the recognition of particular experiences, the other referring chiefly to the understanding of
general laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) and principles. This distinction is expressed in many languages by the use of two
different verbs—by gnônai and eidénai, in Greek; by cognoscere and scire, in Latin, and by their derivatives in the
Romance languages; in German by kennen and wissen.

Essentials of knowledge

(1) Knowledge is essentially the consciousness of an object, i.e. of any thing, fact, or principle belonging to the
physical, mental (../cathen/10321a.htm), or metaphysical order, that may in any manner be reached by cognitive
faculties (../cathen/05749a.htm). An event, a material substance, a man, a geometrical theorem, a mental
(../cathen/10321a.htm) process, the immortality (../cathen/07687a.htm) of the soul (../cathen/14153a.htm), the
existence (../cathen/06608b.htm) and nature (../cathen/06612a.htm) of God (../cathen/06608a.htm), may be so many
objects of knowledge. Thus knowledge implies the antithesis of a knowing subject and a known object. It always
possesses an objective character and any process that may be conceived as merely subjective is not a cognitive
process. Any attempt to reduce the object to a purely subjective experience could result only in destroying the fact
itself of knowledge, which implies the object, or not-self, as clearly as it does the subject, or self.

(2) Knowledge supposes a judgment, explicit or implicit. Apprehension, that is, the mental (../cathen/10321a.htm)
conception of a simple present object, is generally numbered among the cognitive processes, yet, of itself, it is not in
the strict sense knowledge, but only its starting-point. Properly speaking, we know only when we compare, identify,
discriminate, connect; and these processes, equivalent to judgments, are found implicitly even in ordinary sense-
perception. A few judgments are reached immediately, but by far the greater number require patient investigation. The
mind is not merely passive in knowing, not a mirror or sensitized plate, in which objects picture themselves; it is also
active in looking for conditions and causes, and in building up science (../cathen/13598b.htm) out of the materials
which it receives from experience. Thus observation and thought are two essential factors in knowledge.

(3) Truth and certitude are conditions of knowledge. A man may mistake error (../cathen/05525a.htm) for truth
(../cathen/15073a.htm) and give his unreserved assent to a false (../cathen/05781a.htm) statement. He may then be
under the irresistible illusion that he knows, and subjectively the process is the same as that of knowledge; but an
essential condition is lacking, namely, conformity of thought with reality, so that there we have only the appearance of
knowledge. On the other hand, as long as any serious doubt (../cathen/05141a.htm) remains in his mind, a man
cannot say that he knows. "I think so" is far from meaning "I know it is so"; knowledge is not mere opinion or probable
assent. The distinction between knowledge and belief (../cathen/02408b.htm) is more difficult to draw, owing chiefly to
the vague meaning of the latter term. Sometimes belief (../cathen/02408b.htm) refers to assent without certitude, and
denotes the attitude of the mind especially in regard to matters that are not governed by strict and uniform laws
(../cathen/09053a.htm) like those of the physical world, but depend on many complex factors and circumstances, as
happens in human affairs. I know that water will freeze when it reaches a certain temperature; I believe that a man is
fit for a certain office, or that the reforms endorsed by one political party will be more beneficial than those advocated
by another. Sometimes, also, both belief (../cathen/02408b.htm) and knowledge imply certitude, and denote states of
mental (../cathen/10321a.htm) assurance of the truth (../cathen/15073a.htm). But in belief (../cathen/02408b.htm) the
evidence is more obscure and indistinct than in knowledge, either because the grounds on which the assent rests are
not so clear, or because the evidence is not personal, but based on the testimony of witnesses, or again because, in
addition to the objective evidence which draws the assent, there are subjective conditions that predispose to it. Belief
seems to depend on a great many influences, emotions, interests, surroundings, etc., besides the convincing reasons
for which assent is given to truth (../cathen/15073a.htm). Faith (../cathen/05752c.htm) is based on the testimony of
someone else--God or man according as we speak of Divine or of human faith (../cathen/05752c.htm). If the authority
on which it rests has all the required guarantees, faith (../cathen/05752c.htm) gives the certitude of the fact, the
knowledge that it is true (../cathen/15073a.htm); but, of itself, it does not give the intrinsic evidence why it is so.

Kinds of knowledge

(1) It is impossible that all the knowledge a man has acquired should be at once present in consciousness. The
greater part, in fact all of it with the exception of the few thoughts actually present in the mind, is stored up in the form
of latent dispositions which enable the mind to recall it when wanted. Hence we may distinguish actual from habitual
knowledge. The latter extends to whatever is preserved in memory and is capable of being recalled at will. This
capacity of being recalled may require several experiences; a science (../cathen/13598b.htm) is not always known
after it has been mastered once, for even then it may be forgotten. By habitual knowledge is meant knowledge in
readiness to come back to consciousness, and it is clear that it may have different degrees of perfection.

(2) The distinction between knowledge as recognition and knowledge as understanding has already been noted. In the
same connection may be mentioned the distinction between particular knowledge, or knowledge of facts and
individuals (../cathen/07762a.htm), and general knowledge, or knowledge of laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) and classes.
The former deals with the concrete, the latter with the abstract.

(3) According to the process by which it is acquired, knowledge is intuitive (../cathen/08082b.htm) and immediate or
discursive and mediate. The former comes from the direct sense perception, or the direct mental
(../cathen/10321a.htm) intuition (../cathen/08082b.htm) of the truth (../cathen/15073a.htm) of a proposition, based as it
were on its own merits. The latter consists in the recognition of the truth (../cathen/15073a.htm) of a proposition by
seeing its connection with another already known to be true (../cathen/15073a.htm). The self-evident proposition is of
such a nature as to be immediately clear to the mind. No one who understands the terms can fail to know that two and
two are four, or that the whole is greater than any one of its parts. But most human (../cathen/09580c.htm) knowledge
is acquired progressively. Inductive knowledge starts from self-evident facts, and rises to laws (../cathen/09053a.htm)
and causes. Deductive (../cathen/04674a.htm) knowledge proceeds from general self-evident propositions in order to
discover their particular application. In both cases the process may be long, difficult, and complex. One may have to
be satisfied with negative conception and analogical evidence, and, as a result, knowledge will be less clear, less
certain, and more liable to error (../cathen/05525a.htm). (See DEDUCTION (../cathen/04674a.htm); INDUCTION
(../cathen/07779a.htm).)

The problem of knowledge

The question of knowledge belongs to various sciences (../cathen/13598b.htm), each of which takes a different point
of view. Psychology (../cathen/12545b.htm) considers knowledge as a mental (../cathen/10321a.htm) fact whose
elements, conditions, laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) and growth are to be determined. It endeavours to discover the
behaviour of the mind in knowing, and the development of the cognitive process out of its elements. It supplies the
other sciences (../cathen/13598b.htm) with the data on which they must work. Among these data are found certain
laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) of thought which the mind must observe in order to avoid contradiction and to reach
consistent knowledge. Formal logic (../cathen/09324a.htm) also takes the subjective point of view; it deals with these
laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) of thought, and neglecting the objective side of knowledge (that is, its materials), studies
only the formal elements necessary (../cathen/10733a.htm) to consistency and valid proof (../cathen/12454c.htm). At
the other extreme, science (../cathen/13598b.htm), physical or metaphysical, postulating the validity of knowledge, or
at least leaving this problem out of consideration, studies only the different objects of knowledge, their nature and
properties. As to the crucial questions, the validity of knowledge, its limitations, and the relations between the knowing
subject and the known object, these belong to the province of epistemology (../cathen/05506a.htm).
Knowledge is essentially objective. Such names as the "given" or the "content" of knowledge may be substituted for
that of "object", but the plain fact remains that we know something external, which is not formed by, but offered to, the
mind. This must not, however, cause us to overlook another fact equally evident. Different minds will frequently take
different views of the same object. Moreover, even in the same mind, knowledge undergoes great changes in the
course of time (../cathen/14726a.htm); judgments are constantly modified, enlarged or narrowed down, in accordance
with newly discovered facts and ascertained truths (../cathen/15073a.htm). Sense-perception is influenced by past
processes, associations, contrasts, etc. In rational knowledge a great diversity of assents is produced by personal
dispositions, innate or acquired. In a word, knowledge clearly depends on the mind. Hence the assertion that it is
made by the mind alone, that it is conditioned exclusively by the nature of the thinking subject, and that the object of
knowledge is in no way outside of the knowing mind. To use Berkeley's words, to be is to be known (esse est percipi).
The fact of the dependence of knowledge upon subjective conditions however, is far from sufficient to justify this
conclusion. Men agree on many propositions, both of the empirical and of the rational order; they differ not so much on
objects of knowledge as on objects of opinion, not so much on what they really know as on what they think they know.
For two men with normal eyes, the vision of an object, as far as we can ascertain, is sensibly the same. For two men
with normal minds, the proposition that the sum of the angles in a triangle equals two right angles has the same
meaning, and, both for several minds and for the same mind at different times, the knowledge of that proposition is
identical. Owing to associations and differences in mental (../cathen/10321a.htm) attitudes, the fringe of
consciousness will vary and somewhat modify the total mental (../cathen/10321a.htm) state, but the focus of
consciousness, knowledge itself, will be essentially the same. St. Thomas (../cathen/14663b.htm) will not be accused
of idealism (../cathen/07634a.htm), and yet he makes the nature of the mind an essential factor in the act of
knowledge:

“ Cognition is brought about by the presence of the known object in the knowing mind. But the object is in
the knower after the fashion of the knower. Hence, for any knower, knowledge is after the fashion of his
own nature (Summa theol., I, Q. xii, a. 4).

What is this presence of the object in the subject? Not a physical presence; not even in the form of a picture, a
duplicate, or a copy. It cannot be defined by any comparison with the physical world; it is sui generis, a cognitive
likeness, a species intentionalis.

When knowledge, either of concrete realities or of abstract propositions, is said to consist in the presence of an object
in the mind, we cannot mean by this object something external in its absolute existence and isolated from the mind, for
we cannot think outside of our own thought, and the mind cannot know what is not somehow present in the mind. But
this is no sufficient ground for accepting extreme idealism (../cathen/07634a.htm) and looking upon knowledge as
purely subjective. If the object of an assent or experience cannot be absolute reality, it does not follow that to an
assent or experience there is no corresponding reality; and the fact that an object is reached through the conception of
it does not justify the conclusion that the mental (../cathen/10321a.htm) conception is the whole of the object's reality.
To say that knowledge is a conscious process is true (../cathen/15073a.htm), but it is only a part of the truth
(../cathen/15073a.htm). And from this to infer, with Locke, that, since we can be conscious only of what takes place
within ourselves, knowledge is only "conversant with ideas", is to take an exclusively psychological
(../cathen/12545b.htm) view of the fact which asserts itself primarily as establishing a relation between a mind and an
external reality. Knowledge becomes conversant with ideas (../cathen/07630a.htm) by a subsequent process, namely
by the reflection of the mind upon its own activity. The subjectivist has his eyes wide open to the difficulty of explaining
the transition from external reality to the mind, a difficulty which, after all, is but the mystery of consciousness itself. He
keeps them obstinately closed to the utter impossibility of explaining the building up by the mind of an external reality
out of mere conscious processes. Notwithstanding all theorizing to the contrary, the facts impose themselves that in
knowing the mind is not merely active, but also passive; that it must conform, not simply to its own laws
(../cathen/09053a.htm) but to external reality as well; that it does not create facts and laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) but
discovers them; and that the right of truth (../cathen/15073a.htm) to recognition persists even when it is actually
ignored or violated. The mind, it is true (../cathen/15073a.htm), contributes its share to the knowing process, but, to
use the metaphor of St. Augustine (../cathen/02084a.htm), the generation of knowledge requires another cause:
"Whatever object we know is a co-factor in the generation of the knowledge of it. For knowledge is begotten both by
the knowing subject and the known object" (De Trinitate, IX, xii). Hence it may be maintained that there are realities
distinct from ideas (../cathen/07630a.htm) without falling into the absurdity of maintaining that they are known in their
absolute existence, that is apart from their relations to the knowing mind. Knowledge is essentially the vital union of
both.

It has been said above that knowledge requires experience and thought. The attempt to explain knowledge by
experience alone proved (../cathen/12454c.htm) a failure, and the favour which Associationism found at first was
short-lived. Recent criticism of the sciences (../cathen/13598b.htm) has accentuated the fact, which already occupied
a central place in scholastic philosophy, that knowledge, even of the physical and mental (../cathen/10321a.htm)
worlds, implies factors transcending experience. Empiricism fails completely in its endeavour to explain and justify
universal knowledge, the knowledge of uniform laws (../cathen/09053a.htm) under which facts are brought to unity.
Without rational additions, the perception of what is or has been can never give the knowledge of what will certainly
and necessarily be. True as this is of the natural sciences (../cathen/13598b.htm), it is still more evident in abstract and
rational sciences (../cathen/13598b.htm) like mathematics. Hence we are led back to the old Aristotelean
(../cathen/01713a.htm) and Scholastic (../cathen/13548a.htm) view, that all knowledge begins with concrete
experience, but requires other factors, not given in experience, in order to reach its perfection. It needs reason
interpreting the data of observation, abstracting the contents of experience from the conditions which individualize
them in space and time, removing, as it were, the outer envelope of the concrete, and going to the core of reality. Thus
knowledge is not, as in Kantian (../cathen/08603a.htm) criticism, a synthesis of two elements, one external, the other
depending only on the nature of the mind; not the filling up of empty shells—a priori mental (../cathen/10321a.htm)
forms or categories (../cathen/03433a.htm)—with the unknown and unknowable reality. Even abstract knowledge
reveals reality, although its object cannot exist outside of the mind without conditions of which the mind in the act of
knowing divests it.

Knowledge is necessarily proportioned or relative to the capacity of the mind and the manifestations of the object. Not
all men have the same keenness of vision or hearing, or the same intellectual (../cathen/08066a.htm) aptitudes. Nor is
the same reality equally bright from all angles from which it may be viewed. Moreover, better eyes than human might
perceive rays beyond the red and the violet of the spectrum; higher intellects might unravel many mysteries of nature,
know more and better, with greater facility, certainty (../cathen/03539b.htm), and clearness. The fact that we do not
know everything, and that all our knowledge is inadequate, does not invalidate the knowledge which we possess, any
more than the horizon which bounds our view prevents us from perceiving more or less distinctly the various objects
within its limits. Reality manifests itself to the mind in different ways and with varying degrees of clearness. Some
objects are bright in themselves and are perceived immediately. Others are known indirectly by throwing on them light
borrowed elsewhere, by showing by way of causality (../cathen/03459a.htm), similarity, analogy their connection with
what we already know. This is essentially the condition of scientific progress, to find connections between various
objects, to proceed from the known to the unknown. As we recede from the self-evident, the path may become more
difficult, and the progress slower. But, with the Agnostic (../cathen/01215c.htm), to assign clearly defined boundaries to
our cognitive powers is unjustifiable, for we pass gradually from one object to another without break, and there is no
sharp limit between science (../cathen/13598b.htm) and metaphysics (../cathen/10226a.htm). The same instruments,
principles, and methods that are recognized in the various sciences (../cathen/13598b.htm) will carry us higher and
higher, even to the Absolute (../cathen/01060c.htm), the First Cause, the Source of all reality. Induction
(../cathen/07779a.htm) will lead us from the effect to the cause, from the imperfect to the perfect, from the contingent
to the necessary (../cathen/10733a.htm), from the dependent to the self-existent, from the finite to the infinite
(../cathen/08004a.htm).

And this same process by which we know God's existence (../cathen/06608b.htm) cannot fail to manifest something—
however little—of His nature and perfections. That we know Him imperfectly, by way chiefly of negation and analogy,
does not deprive this knowledge of all value. We can know God (../cathen/06608a.htm) only so far as He manifests
Himself through His works which dimly mirror His perfections, and so far as our finite mind will allow. Such knowledge
will necessarily remain infinitely (../cathen/08004a.htm) far from being comprehension, but it is only by a misleading
confusion of terms that Spencer identifies the unknowable with the incomprehensible, and denies the possibility of any
knowledge of the Absolute (../cathen/01060c.htm) because we can have no absolute-knowledge. Seeing "through a
glass" and "in a dark manner" is far from the vision "face to face" of which our limited mind is incapable without a
special light from God (../cathen/06608a.htm) Himself. Yet it is knowledge of Him who is the source both of the world's
intelligibility and truth (../cathen/15073a.htm), and of the mind's (../cathen/10321a.htm) intelligence. (See also
AGNOSTICISM (../cathen/01215c.htm), CERTITUDE (../cathen/03539b.htm), EPISTEMOLOGY
(../cathen/05506a.htm), FAITH. (../cathen/05752c.htm))

About this page

APA citation. Dubray, C. (1910). Knowledge. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Retrieved April 6, 2018 from New Advent: Retrieved April 6, 2018 from New Advent:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08673a.htm

MLA citation. Dubray, Charles. "Knowledge." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1910. 6 Apr. 20186 Apr. 2018 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08673a.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Rick McCarty.
Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal
Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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