Knowledge and Intuition

Note to the Reader: When first published, this article confused some readers by my use of the term “intuition.” I am not attempting here to define any general concept of intuition. Rather, I am noting that knowledge fills a gap that represents a preconception about what we expect to learn, or what we think about the world before we are given more mature or better accepted knowledge. We assume our preconceptions, what I here call “intuitions,” are not as good as the “knowledge” that seeks the replace them, but the reality is occasionally more complex. This article is about that surprise complexity.

If this post oversimplifies things, that's probably good. It will make my point more clear. The point is not technical anyway, it is intuitional. It can only be injured by adding technical clarity.

Knowledge and intuition are Yin and Yang, complementary opposites.

We begin our lives with intuitions about what we expect the world to be. Through our growth, we acquire knowledge. Often at the expense of our early intuitions. We spend a lot of our time learning why the world cannot be what we hoped it would be.

It is the rare person who succeeds in acquiring knowledge without losing his vision of why he wanted that knowledge, of what justified the expense of acquiring that knowledge.

Our early instruction of children emphasizes simple truths, sometimes oversimplifying, but offering echos of what we wish the world really were. Or sometimes even what we used to wish what the world was before we forgot that wishes were of value.

Children know how they want the world. They want it free of guns, of violence, of war. They want no one denied health care or left starving.

We explain why these are not goals, why they never could be. Soon enough, they forget they even wanted them. Then we smile approvingly and call them adults.

Computer novices ask for computers to be smart. But we explain to them about how to articulate their problems well enough that they can Google for workarounds. Soon enough, they are so proud of their own ability to overcome computer stupidity they've forgotten it would be better if they didn't have to. Then we smile again approvingly and call them computer literate.

Knowledge wears down intuition.

We bring children into the world in part to remind ourselves as a society of what we started out to be. Not having yet become jaded, they ask anew the hard questions we'd forgotten we used to ask. All too quickly, the reflexive temptation is to answer them, rather than to hear their inquiries as an opportunity for reflection: Are we going in the direction we set out to? Are we sure there was no other way?

They often try to find that better way. Sometimes they learn, as we did, that it's elusive. But sometimes they do better than those that came before them. In many ways, the virtue is in the trying.

If you're an expert who speaks routinely with others who know less about your area of expertise, always remember that they may have something that you may have lost—that in offering your knowledge, perhaps, if you also listen, you'll be lucky enough to recover some of the intuition you lost in acquiring that knowledge.

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Author's Notes:

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There is a sequel to this point, Intuition and Knowledge, which adds some clarifications and additional thoughts.

Public domain yin/yang symbol obtained from Wikipedia.
Text and composed artwork copyright © 2009 by Kent M. Pitman.

Originally published March 19, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): politics, knowledge, intuition, balance, understanding, contentment, war, peace, hunger, suffering, child, children, adults, adulthood, yin, yang, life, life lesson, philosophy, teacher, student, talk, listen