The cyclical nature of the dissolution and rediscovery of knowledge
The 1st of a multi-part series on knowledge management in the age of AI
For the past few years on my podcast Crazy Wisdom, I’ve been delving into the question: Are we in a dark age or a golden age?
As a part of this question of dark ages or golden ages, the main ingredient is the widespread accessibility of relevant knowledge. I’ve become obsessed with the ways in which knowledge gets lost and then miraculously gets discovered again (or doesn’t), whether that is at the civilizational level or company level.
This question can’t be fully articulated without an understanding of the history of knowledge. Here goes.
Knowledge sits between information/data and wisdom.
Information is everywhere. The feeling you get when the rays from the sun hit your face is part of the way your body recognizes the information of radiation coming from the sun. It turns that information into deeply embedded knowledge represented by that warm sensation on your face.
What separates information from knowledge?
Knowledge is applied. It takes information and creates a story or a narrative based on the context in which the information is surrounded.
Since we humans are social to our core, knowledge can be transferred from one person to another, indeed this process is a key part of the puzzle of how human beings have become dominant on this planet.
Our ancestors in Ancient Greece and Rome were well aware of this shared aspect of knowledge and the primary way that they did this, long before the written word showed up, was through the process of oral dialogue in shared physical space.
The articulation of the spoken word was at least on par, if not more important, than the content of the dialogue. How you said something was a key part of this knowledge transfer.
Then something happened. In the golden age of Axial age Greece, as Alexander conquered territory after territory, a new process of knowledge transfer was invented:
The Library
The most famous library throughout history being the library of Alexandria. For the first time the idea that you could collect knowledge in one physical space set the stage for the eventual primacy of the written word.
As the dark ages dawned and the Greek and Roman civilizations started to dissolve into the dustbins of history, a new figure arose, the figure of Jesus Christ.
Jesus didn’t write down anything, but his disciples did. As Rome was falling, they used the Roman road network to write letters to other followers of what was then a very niche cult of Judaism. These letters would come to form the bedrock of what eventually would become the New Testament of the Bible.
During the dark ages followed by the fall of Rome, asceticism, the practice of going off into the desert and becoming devoted to the word of God, became a relatively fruitful practice. If the material world was falling apart, might as well find solace in the spiritual plane.
Monks started to take these letters and go off into distant monasteries and faithfully practice their religion based on the written word. After a thousand years, they created a dogma that would become the modern church.
The problem with the written word in this era was that the paper it was written on was both scarce and it could dissolve. The monks had to start copying the words onto other pieces of paper, much of which already had writings on them.
These pieces of parchment are the same that would have been found in the library of Alexandria, the great works of antiquity, but these Christians had no use for the pagan works, believing that the only important works were from the followers of Christ so they wrote over them.
And yet, it was in these same monasteries, a thousand years after they multiplied, that the early fathers of the scientific tradition would start to rediscover these great works of antiquity, particularly the works of Aristotle.
From this, the scientific tradition was born and out of these monasteries, the European university system gradually grew and knowledge took on a new form. Physical centers of research and learning gradually grew into the separate disciplines that we know today.
The knowledge management tool of letter writing soon became the first analog equivalent to our digital internet in what was called the “Republic of Letters”. Great thinkers all over Europe and the US would write letters to each other about their discoveries of the natural world.
Most people consider the book and the printing press to be the major development during this time, the inventions that would vastly increase the power of the written word, but it’s more complex than that.
It was actually the republic of letters that allowed for the flourishing of the book. These early scientists would write flurries of letters to each other about their ideas and only when it was considered the proper time would they collect their ideas into a book and publish it.
Years before Copernicus and Galileo published their heretical works, gradually proclaiming the primacy of the sun in our solar system, these figures were part of a network of individuals timing the proper release of these heretical ideas through the use of letter writing.
So far we have only covered the primacy of the written word as it pertains to the cultural transfer of knowledge, but knowledge is far vaster than the written word. It also includes visual stimuli.
Enter the museum.
Rich eccentric gentlemen in Europe, many of whom were part of this Republic of Letters started to bring back their treasures from their journeys across the globe and create museums of strange new artifacts that people could physically interact with. The goal was to provoke wonder and that it did. Europe’s understanding of its own culture as just one culture among many started to dawn.
Please excuse the ambition of the assertion, but this early museum was in many ways the analog equivalent to the many recent attempts to establish virtual realities in the digital space
Quickly glossing over many details for the sake of your time, dear reader, the history of knowledge management throughout the dark ages and into the renaissance, created the foundations for the revolutionary network called the internet which the entire modern world and its millions of knowledge workers depend on to do their daily work.
Please stay tuned for a current summary of the current best practices of knowledge management inside institutions of all sizes and scopes. Make sure to subscribe if it piques your interest.
If you enjoyed this history and want to dive deeper, please see the book “Reinventing Knowledge”