What are the types of knowledge

Knowledge is the result of a cognitive process that has a certain structure and stages associated with the stages of the formation and development of society. Human knowledge develops along with the complication of practical activity.

There are different kinds of human knowledge. Some of the ancient forms are religious and philosophical. The founder of positivism, O. Comte in the middle of the 19th century proposed a concept that reflects the types of knowledge. In his concept, he considered three forms, successively replacing one another.

The first form he considered religious knowledge. It is based on individual faith and traditions.

The second form is philosophical knowledge. It is based on author's intuition or other concept and is speculative and rational in its essence.

Scientific knowledge is the third form. It is based on fixing the facts against the background of a purposeful experiment or observation.

Today, it is obvious that all these types of knowledge develop in parallel and exist in the same way as plants and animals exist in natural conditions.

There is also another classification. According to the concept of M. Polani (English philosopher), the types of knowledge are classified according to personal characteristics. The English philosopher proceeded from the fact that knowledge is an active comprehension of things - an action that requires special tools and special art. In the "personal", in the opinion of Polanyi, not only reality is imprinted, but also a person with her interest in cognition. In this case, there is a complex of not only any statements, but also experiences of the individual. Thus, Polanyi distinguished the following types of knowledge:

1. Explicit, articulated, expressed in theories, judgments, concepts.
2. Implicit, implicit, not subject to the full reflection of human experience.

Knowledge implicit is embodied in bodily skills, practical skills, schemes of perception. It is not reflected completely in textbooks, but is transmitted in communication and personal contact.

As the main component of the structure of general education, knowledge is the result of knowledge of the laws of nature, thinking, society, reality. This result reflects the generalized human experience that has been accumulated in the course of social historical practice.

Educational content includes such types of knowledge as:

1. The main terms and concepts that reflect reality. In addition to everyday reality, they also have scientific knowledge.
2. Facts of daily reality and science. They are used to uphold and prove their ideas.
3. Basic scientific laws. They reveal the relationship between various phenomena and objects.
4. Theories that contain a set of scientific knowledge about a specific system of objects, objects, the relationship between them, as well as the methods of predicting and explaining phenomena in a particular subject area.
5. Evaluation knowledge. They reflect the norms of relations to different life phenomena.
6. Knowledge of the methods of conducting scientific activity, ways of knowing, as well as the history of acquiring information.

All these types have features related to the functions and technologies used in training.

Knowledge can also be:

1. Emotional and rational.
2. Essential (based on the use of quantitative means of analysis) and phenomenological (based on the use of "qualitative" concepts).
3. Theoretical and empirical (experimental).
4. Private and philosophical.
5. Humanitarian and natural sciences.

From the pedagogical and psychological point of view, the most interesting are the differences between rational (natural science) and sensory (humanitarian) knowledge.