>Knowledge is a set of facts. This view, very common in the 20th C and beyond, is exposed and (I think) demolished in Oakeshott's essay Rationalism in Politics

>Knowledge is a set of facts. This view, very common in the 20th C and beyond, is exposed and (I think) demolished in Oakeshott's essay Rationalism in Politics[0]. The rationalism he's talking about (which he says almost all political parties in the West nowadays espouse) is precisely believing that knowledge is a set of facts. That all knowledge can be written down in bullet points, and taught. Yet most knowledge cannot be. If I know how to ride a bike, to play a musical instrument, to do any complex activity well, most of what I know cannot be put and wasn't learned in such a form. It's "know-how", practical knowledge, distinct from the kind that can be put into words, "know-that". Let Oakeshott speak for himself a little: "The second sort of knowledge I will call practical, because it exists only in use, is not reflective and (unlike technique) cannot be formulated in rules. This does not mean, however, that it is an esoteric sort of knowledge. It means only that the method by which it may be shared and becomes common knowledge is not the method of formulated doctrine. And if we consider it from this point of view, it would not, I think, be misleading to speak of it as traditional knowledge. In every activity this sort of knowledge is also involved; the mastery of any skill, the pursuit of any concrete activity is impossible without it. These two sorts of knowledge, then, distinguishable but insep­arable, are the twin components of the knowledge involved in every concrete human activity. In a practical art, such as cookery, nobody supposes that the knowledge that belongs to the good cook is con­fined to what is or may be written down in the cookery book; tech­nique and what I have called practical knowledge combine to make skill in cookery wherever it exists. And the same is true of the fine arts, of painting, of music, of poetry; a high degree of technical knowledge, even where it is both subtle and ready, is one thing; the ability to create a work of art, the ability to compose something with real musical qualities, the ability to write a great sonnet, is another, and requires, in addition to technique, this other sort of knowledge. Again, these two sorts of knowledge are involved in any genuinely scientific activity. The natural scientist will certainly make use of the rules of observation and verification that belong to his tech­nique, but these rules remain only one of the components of his knowledge; advance in scientific discovery was never achieved merely by following the rules..." [0] 1962. It's very readable, everyone should read it. It was embarrassing how much I learned from it. I even learned a lot about teaching music from it.