Draft 2:

Summary: In this entry I work to pry apart various knowledge contexts and start to distinguish their place in individual, group and societal life.

One perspective is of knowledge created within the context of an individual life. Another multi-person perspective is of knowledge as it functions within a cultural context: as a particular unit of knowledge within the knowledge base that makes up the competence to function under most conditions within a culture.

Yet another knowledge perspective is a theoretical category; i.e., it is the category that spans full breadth of potentially useful knowledge that is inaccessible because lost to human view ( e.g., lost in historical or cultural transitions (such as simple erosion/supplantation over 10,000 years of history, or in the transition (whether peaceful or by conquest between one cultural existence and another .

Another form of inaccessibility; it is the knowledge that is inaccessible because not yet widely disseminated or in earlier stages such as created (examples: an invention that works but which is waiting patent review, a thesis about nongradual evolution that is in the mail the editors of Nature magazine) but not yet tested by a first set of competent critics.

Knowledge for a child or adult is the change in capability that allows a (inevitably) temporary equilibrium with a given situation. Knowledge can also be viewed in terms of its context and its genesis. Thus Piaget's fascination of with the sequences that lead from one state of knowing to other more sophisticated states. (He called it genetic epistemology). Exploring meaning of specific general knowledge items through studying a sequence of individual transformations. Studying a scientist's or artists struggles from kernal idea through to creation of knowledge products new to a cultural milieu.

In this concern with knowledge - the individual is acquiring generally understood symbols, lenses for viewing reality. From the parent's and teacher's point of view this acquisition is a matter for some celebration, for, the more a child acquires of what is generally known within a culture, the more s/he can participate in that culture's small mysteries, and through them, the the ultimate mastery of a major subset of the culture's activities. You might call this the pursuit of cultural literacy.

[More to come on universal knowledge that goes beyond cultural literacy. At some point amongst us someone in our group will make knowledge that others dont have. If they share that knowledge they are changing the nature of what "cultural literacy" is in that group.

At some point someone will make knowledge that for her/him is useful and which, if spread, would help others transact with their situations in a satisfying way. In other words that new knowledge is worthy of insertion into cultural knowledge base. In the case of new knowledge, however, there's no one there to celebrate because no one else is in a position to recognize it's value. For the creator of new knowledge this state of unrecognized grace is quite unlike the celebration that occurs as one masters one's native language grammer. In the case of grammar mastery there are aslready competent practitioners who will , by various means, welcome you into the community of grammarians.

Picture now an individual's creation of a philosophical, musical, mechanical, scientific or other "knowledge item" that no person or entity has ever known at any time in any culture, ever. For the sake of dramatizing this experience, think of it as an unpredicable transition in the field; yes, a paradigm shift. This too would share the awkwardness of being extended beyond the knowledge base of one's group but would lack even the potential of finding, even after arduous search, any evidence of this finding's, the "knowledge item's" legitimate credentials.

Here we'd have to say that the work of making a home for this idea (the defining, explaining, defending, inserting into social contexts that could retain identity while at the same time profiting from having this item) is totally on the back of the innovator.