Historical knowledge has an important value, although we cannot find the tip of the ball, what we learn in its search are multiple teachings and experiences that will serve at least so that everyone is on the same reel of thread. This is a good start.
Chances are that for the reader who is immersed in the business world the prehistory of knowledge does not have much implication in the management that he exercises day by day as a manager, supervisor, employee, consultant, independent professional, or other position, but If this article talks about knowledge, there is nothing purer than the formal history of knowledge, the one that is written in books and that appears as a common point for any theory or practice of Knowledge Management.
I was born in Mar del Plata, in fact my family still lives there, in January I took a vacation and went to visit her. One day in the morning I took a tour of the municipal library to collect some type of information that was linked to Knowledge Management. Actually I must be honest and admit that I did not have a clear idea of what I was looking for, but let me flow and trust the surprise factor (among so many books there had to be something).
When I was looking for the wooden files, very uncomfortable, by the way, I found a relic of ancient texts and authors who surely did not know the typewriter. Many of them were not known by the majority, what happens is that when searching by subject: knowledge, the tabs of titles and authors began to emerge as ants to sugar.
"Knowledge figures as the common thread of all past and future generations, it is through knowledge that we build cultures, societies, fashions, ways of relating, etc."
Among so much information I did not find anything interesting. With low morale, victim of disappointment, it occurred to me to optimize time and be more precise in the search for information; I would investigate the origin of formal knowledge in the hope that something interesting would appear that would indicate the starting point as precisely as possible. Luckily instinct did not betray me and I found some relevant data that I will try to summarize chronologically.
In 1690, the English philosopher Jhon Locke wrote: "Essays on human understanding", in which he treats human knowledge in a systematic and different way, but this is not the most interesting, the most interesting thing is that this book was the first that appeared in the modern age and addressed the criteria of the theory of knowledge.
Later, in England, in 1765, Leibniz with his work: "New Essays on Human Understanding" totally discarded the vision and concept that Locke had contributed and a series of essays was launched, among which the one by George Berkeley stood out: "Treaties on the Principles of Human Knowledge", the book of which came to light around 1710. So far the most sensible seems to be the work of Berkeley, since the ancestors were about "human understanding" and what they did least was to understand each other with the discreditings and reformulations of theories that were made among themselves.
Undoubtedly, these discussions, with their subsequent contributions, have added to what we know or understand today as knowledge, but the philosophical contribution and perhaps the best known within continental philosophy is still lacking. Emanuel Kant writes in 1781 "Critique of reason", in this book he did not dedicate himself to investigating the psychological origin of knowledge, but rather his task is to delve into the logic of knowledge and its validity as such, he asks himself between other things as possible and on what basis is it supported.
Kant's philosophical concept made me open my head, not because of the content he provided, but because when I finished reading, I left the reading room with many questions circulating about me, so I continued to philosophize a little more and asked myself myself, if Locke is the first to deal with the subject of knowledge in 1690…. On what do you base your knowledge to develop your work?
"Today's knowledge is the fruit of a chain of historical knowledge that has neither a beginning nor an end."
The conclusion I came to is that I couldn't find the exact starting point where knowledge originates, but inadvertently I came across something much better. History is linked by chronological time and knowledge. If I go further, at the moment I am typing on the computer keyboard, to get to the computer, you had to go through the cave paintings, the hieroglyphs, the alphabet, mathematics and the typewriter, among other things.
Today's knowledge is the fruit of a historical knowledge chain that has neither a beginning nor an end and on which future generations will rely to grow and develop, just as we have relied on past generations to reach the situation we are in today.
Are these conclusions important to the business world? Perhaps for the most open it may be that yes, while for the direct and concrete these philosophical aspects surely have nothing to do with it and they continue to be interested in seeing how knowledge can be applied and influence the line of measurable results of their organization. I ask this type of people not to despair because we are going there.
What unites this brief historical review, together with their respective conclusions, to the business world is that in both cases when we analyze them from the outside, we refer to people, and in the case that we point to objects as a cause of study, we do not we can take off from the human being as creator
To understand and understand this knowledge revolution we cannot get away from the human factor, they are objects, cultures, sciences, societies, companies, creations of a common element: the human mind. It is human resources that possess knowledge and it is they who deposit their human capital to influence the measurable results of companies.
In organizations, and any other social sphere, we cannot ignore Human Resources seeking to supplant them by technologies, technology is ultimately a tool of knowledge, and its evolution or application is a consequence of what people deposit in them. With this what I mean is that technological systems are diagrammed based on the knowledge that human resources of the market, of the client, of the system, of the needs of the company, etc. have.
Historical knowledge has an important value, although we cannot find the tip of the ball, what we learn in its search are multiple teachings and experiences that will serve at least so that everyone is on the same reel of thread. This is a good start.
© Pablo L. Belly All rights reserved. This article may be redistributed, forwarded, copied, printed, or quoted as long as it does not modify its content and does not use it for commercial purposes. You must include this note, as well as the name of the company Belly Knowledge Management International and its author: Pablo L. Belly, the email [email protected] and the address www.bellykm.com
