source: pixels
I think a lot about hierarchy, about power levels, like in animes, about the stages, and graduations; of things tangible and intangible, physical and abstract, how it would feel and what it takes to go from one stage to the next, the difference between each stage; the one before to the one after, but where can I put myself? Where in the hierarchy do I belong?
Well, "I believe that being able to conceive a stage already means that you are capable of existing at that level in the hierarchy”.
Please I'll be using the terms knowledge and understanding interchangeably a lot.
The stages of Knowledge:
What does it mean to know something?
Without much thought, "being able to put in your own words, a definition for something" entails that, to some extent, you know at least a part of it; "a fraction of the entire concept has succumbed to your understanding".
Fractions, yes? "The more a part of something you know...", that should be the basis for ranking knowledge, right? That may be false; like knowing a part of a recipe, the taste of your final dish may be miles off the chef's original dish. The complete knowledge then is level 1 and improvements on that make the hierarchy.
...then there will be no one complete knowledge. Hmm, but what if knowing a part of something doesn't make your understanding completely wrong, maybe forgetting the colon,":" at the end of a computer code would still produce a result close to the right answer? False, for codes, but if we should look at relativistic problems, we can accept that there are levels to our understanding of anything.
The first stage is when we hear something for the first time and repeat that which we heard, word for word; "Replication ”. At first, we have no idea what the concept is all about, so we internalize those meaningless strings of alphabets and symbols and try linking them to the world around us. We attribute an object, a phenomenon; just something we know or have heard about previously, We bring these items onto our imaginary stage, like on a Lego table, joining blocks of characters one to the other, at first randomly, until we begin to find some interesting structures. From simple connections to longer slender members, and on to branched complex structures; maybe we go from using a single block as a unit to an assembly of several blocks with a different overall shape, now filled with newer possibilities, begging the question: Is the answer meant to be more complex than the question, but I digress.
"Putting similar blocks together gives a larger more complex shape, make that shape itself a unit and you get greater possibilities from there on out; a transformation leading unto greater possibilities", But our little minds are safe, there exists a boundary: our reality, the life we have lived till this day.
Our experiences are finite so from our tiny perspective, we can only go smaller from our starting point. This covers the meaning of the second level of knowledge, "putting in your world" or popularly, "...your terms". To successfully convenience yourself that in your world, a definition stands.
Let's not forget that all of this is coming from our perspective and perspectives change, it changes with a change in environment, with age and experience, newer interactions with people, and with the times. This change leads to growth, and growth makes our understanding stronger. When our knowledge has gained enough fluidity so that we can share with other people perspectives as we understand them, then we have reached the third stage.
"When the feedback from our audience resonates with our understanding of something, then we have attained this new level”. Don't forget, the work is not done until the audience has attained the second level of understanding, "putting in their world".
Say I ask a passing stranger a question: "What is a square". The stranger then replies: "A square is a plane figure bounded by two sides". Well, that sounds very familiar to me that's the exact definition I received back in secondary school. That is a verbatim reply which sounds like we are referring to the first level of knowledge. Well, that is true, but this definition could also be at the fourth level of knowledge. I know it may sound confusing, but saying something as it is, is the second highest level of knowledge, well There is a catch:
"”. When our life experiences, our research, and our philosophies resonate with the word-for-word implications of our definition of a phenomenon, we then conclude that there is no better way of putting that definition to a greater audience, without misconception, than verbatim.
Let us break down the definition example:
To understand the concept of a square at the fourth level, we have to look at the precise definition of the different words and/or phrases that make up our definition; from the phrase: "plane figure”, to other terms like "bounded”, and "four sides”.
If we look deeper into these key terms, we may realize that all there is to know about a square is summarized therein:
Plane figure: a 2D object.
Bounded: surrounded, enclosed.
Four sides: four discrete boundaries, four interloping faces; We start with one term, then try joining its meaning with another term, we iterate first and second terms, second and third, second and first, etc. We finally arrive at a discrete connection between all these parts of the puzzle, the one true structure of our definition, free from unwanted and disproven possibilities.
"We finally arrive at a near-perfect image of the concept we want to describe, though something remains…”.
The fifth and ultimate level of understanding has to do with materialization, quantifying; and attributing a physical value to that concept. This conception is usually a mathematical representation of what something is. It could be a number or an equation.
"When you put into mathematical terms, the definition of something, you have arrived at the final level of understanding*".