The 13 types of knowledge (with examples)

In this blog post, we discuss the 13 types of knowledge that are known in this world.

We also give you examples of each type and discuss the difference between data, knowledge and information.

What does the term “knowledge” mean?

There is a great deal of confusion about the differences between data, information and knowledge. 

• data reflects the numerical or letter description of some actions, processes, facts, phenomena;
• information brings an increase of knowledge reflecting a set of data grouped into certain models and forms;
• and knowledge groups a set of information with a strong human and contextual determinant.

Therefore, knowledge is described as a set of information acquired or applied to a particular context through human thinking.

A significant difference between information and knowledge is determined by the transfer of them.

While information can be easily transferred from one person to another, knowledge has a lower degree of transferability.

It also has a psycho-social content, a context that reflects intuition, creativity and experience to the person who possesses this knowledge.

The value of knowledge is manifested in the products and the physical services of the organization, in the intellectual products (patents and licenses), processes (structural) and in people (intellectuality).

What are the 13 types of knowledge?

Below you will read about the 13 most known types of knowledge: 

A Posteriori knowledge 

A posteriori knowledge is an information acquired through experience, based on experience, particular, factual, empirical information. 

The two concepts, a priori and a posteriori, were first imposed in philosophical language, since antiquity, in the philosophical writings of Aristotle and Plato or in the mathematical work of Euclid. 

The one who consecrated these terms, however, was the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, in the eighteenth century, through the Critique of Pure Reason (1871), written in only four months, followed by the Critique of Practical Reason (1787) and the Critique of Judgment (1790). 

A posteriori knowledge is a personal, direct, empirical, sensory knowledge or that offered by the experimental sciences. 

Some a posteriori particular statements (discovered through experience) would be, for example,  Apples taste good / The dog barks / Some bags are heavy, etc.

A Priori knowledge 

A priori knowledge is independent of experience, before any experience, before the facts, a knowledge that is based on pure reason (in Latin, “a priori” means “before”, a priori – “from what precedes”).

In general, it is considered as a priori knowledge (before experience / independent of experience) that is offered, for example, mathematics (logical-mathematical laws), theoretical thinking / pure reason (logical, deductive), the concepts of “time”, “cause”, tautology (as a form of a priori intuition), etc.,

For Friedrich Nietzsche, a priori is synonymous with what is “born”, and in Carl Jung’s thinking, a form of a priori representation is the archetype – a universal model, common to all cultures, but expressed through various symbols, which structure our unconscious and resulting from human experiences on a historical scale.

For example, a priori statements would be such as: God is immortal/A man is always man/All triangles have three sides /All singles are unmarried,etc.,

The expression a priori can also mean “prejudice” / preconceived idea, usually erroneous and unfavourable, that one can make about a thing, a person, a reality, without direct knowledge or imposed by education, as in statements such as: Adolescents are rebellious/A black cat brings bad luck/People are mean/Everything that is written in a book is true, etc.

Dispersed knowledge 

Dispersed knowledge is common and often used in the financial market.

This type of knowledge does not necessarily have a true and uniques source of information but is composed of several sources.

Thus, each person comes with his part of the truth, with his own knowledge, which in the end, are part of a whole and creates the dispersed knowledge.

Domain knowledge 

Domain knowledge is the totality of a person’s knowledge in a certain domain.

Basically, we can consider this person to be an expert in what he does.

For example, we can say that a mathematician or a chemist has a domain of knowledge regarding their field of study.

In these people, we can trust that they have the best skills and methods to solve problems in their field.

Domain knowledge is very important in everyday life because almost every career and success is based on it.

Empirical knowledge 

An empirical or sensory method is the scientific knowledge of the surrounding reality through experience, involving the interaction with the subject studied through experiments and observations.

Empirical research methods help to identify the objective laws by which the development of certain phenomena occurs.

These are complex and complex stages and, as a result, new scientific discoveries appear.

Unlike theoretical methods, empirical knowledge has a minimal possibility of errors and shortcomings provided that the experiment is repeated several times and gives similar results.

Any empirical method involves the human senses, which are a reliable tool for understanding the world around us – and this is the main advantage of this method.

Encoded knowledge 

Encoded knowledge is used when it is necessary to establish a pattern, based on which to ensure optimal operation of a product.

In simpler terms, encoded knowledge is conveyed by symbols and signs, as we find them in certain documents, manuals or books.

Explicit knowledge 

Explicit knowledge is the easiest information to access and transmit to others.

Some examples of explicit knowledge are tutorials that teach us step-by-step how to do certain things or the information we learn from textbooks, encyclopedias or statistics.

Known unknowns 

Known unknowns type of knowledge is connected to one’s intuition.

 To better understand this concept, think about the last time you had to make a decision, and even if you had all the facts, it was as if you felt that information was missing, or that something was simply suspicious.

Also, it has probably happened to you many times before that what you “intuited” was going to happen, actually happened.

There is no magic in the middle! You used your known unknowns knowledge.

This type of knowledge makes us think and realize that there are certain things that we do not even know exist.

Metaknowledge 

This sort of knowledge is “information about information”. Metaknowledge is utilized to characterize things like labels, scientific categorizations, models, which are useful to depict information. 

A considerable amount of scholastic zones like the investigation of books, epistemology, list of sources, or the way of thinking of information, are considered as meta information.

Meta-information is a principal instrument for fields like information designing, information the executives and so forth.

Examples of meta-knowledge are arranging, demonstrating, learning, and labelling of space information.

Procedural knowledge 

Procedural knowledge is monitoring how to accomplish something. This sort of information is hard to pass on, in view of its activity of a subordinate nature.

In the lawful framework, procedural knowledge is considered as the licensed innovation of an organization and it tends to be obtained after the organization is acquired. 

Procedural information includes more detects, for example, viable experience, practice at taking care of issues and so on.

Procedural information is not quite the same as engaging information since everybody has an alternate strategy to do a comparable errand and spellbinding information is acquired by doing it.

Propositional knowledge 

Propositional knowledge is otherwise called expressive, definitive, or constative information.

This sort of information can be spoken to in a characteristic or formal language, for example, arithmetic or propositional rationale.

For example, The flower has bloomed, The Moon is a sub-planet of Earth, a+b>b+c

Situated knowledge 

Situated knowledge originates from a perspective. It mirrors a specific circumstance.

This sort of information can be utilized to give a clarification of the trouble of breaking down history or culture being an outcast.

For example, an American analyst can frame a hypothesis about Indians, however, it very well may not be the same as how Indians see themselves.

Tacit knowledge 

This kind of information is hard to express, clarify or achieve, for example, being great at playing an instrument or making puzzles.

It is likewise connected with one of a kind encounters which permits specific individuals to accomplish authority specifically craftsmanship. 

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is the best case of implicit information since it easily falls into place for certain individuals to express their feelings in order to accomplish certain results.

Other than that intuition, strategy, problem-solving, and decision- making are examples of tacit knowledge. 

Conclusions

In this blog post, we discussed the 13 types of knowledge that are known in this world.

We also gave you examples of each type and discussed the difference between data, knowledge and information.

What you need to remember from this blog post is that there are 13 types of knowledge, and each one is essential for us humans.

Please feel free to ask any question or to leave a comment on the content!

FAQ about types of knowledge

References and Further Reading

DAVENPORT, T. H., LAURENCE P. Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know, Harvard Business School Press, 1998 

KOULOPOULOS, T. M., SPINELLO, R.A., WAYNE T. Corporate Instinct: Building a Knowing Enterprise for the 21st Century, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997

LEONARD BARTON, D. Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation, Harvard Business School Press, 1995 

NONAKA, I., HIROTAKA, T. The Knowledge-Creating Company, Oxford University Press, 1995