“With the development of the human race (and perhaps a little earlier), a new structure emerges, which we can call know-what. This consists of the structures in the nervous system which presumably map into some kind of images in the of the 'mind', which also map into structure in the 'real world', whatever that is. Know-what is very different from know-how. The fertilized egg certainly has the know-how to make whatever organism it knows how to make, but it is very doubtful that it knows what it is doing. The remarkable thing about know-what is that it creates know-how, as we see with the fantastic burgeoning of human artifacts under the influence of a science-based technology. Science, fundamentally, deals with know-what and this enormously increases know-how.”

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Kenneth Boulding (1984) In: Meheroo Jussawalla, Helene Ebenfield eds. Communication and information economics: new perspectives. p. vii as cited in: John Laurent (2003) Evolutionary Economics and Human Nature. p. 177
1980s

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Kenneth E. Boulding 163

British-American economist 1910–1993

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1984) In: Meheroo Jussawalla, Helene Ebenfield eds. Communication and information economics: new perspectives. p. vii
1980s

“If people in the organization don't understand how a company is supposed to be different, how it creates value compared to its rivals, then how can they possibly make all of the myriad choices they have to make? Every salesman has to know the strategy — otherwise, he won't know who to call on. Every engineer has to understand it, or she won't know what to build.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Michael Porter, "The CEO as strategist," in: Henry Mintzberg, Bruce W. Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel (eds.). Strategy bites back: It is a lot more, and less, than you ever imagined. Pearson Education, 2005. p. 45

“We do not know what death is. If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall be know about death which we have not — and in the nature of things never can?”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“We do not know structures, but we know because of structures.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: The Dramatic Universe: Man and his nature (1966), p. 7

“The human being, on the other hand, is firmly located in a temporal process. He has an image of the past which extends back far beyond the limits of his own life and experience, and he likewise has an image of the future. Closely associated with the time structure of his image is the image of the structure of relationships. Because we are aware of time, we are also aware of cause and effect, of contiguity and succession, of cycles and repetition. The image of man is also characterized by a much greater degree of self-consciousness and of self-awareness than that of the lower animals. We not only know, but we know that we know. This reflective character of the human image is unique, and is what leads to philosophy.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 25

“It is much more accurate to identify the factors of production as know-how (that is genetic information structure), energy, and materials, for, as we have seen, all processes of production involve the direction of energy by some know-how structure toward the selection, transportation, and transformation of materials into the product”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1980s, Evolutionary Economics, 1981, p. 27

“Why do we know what we know and why don't we know what we don't know? What should we know and what shouldn't we know? How might we know differently?”

Robert N. Proctor (1954) American historian

Source: Value-free science?: Purity and power in modern knowledge, 1991, p. 13

“The idea behind structuralism is that there are things we may not know but we can learn how they are related to each other.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

As quoted in his obituary, Daily Telegraph (4 November 2009) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/6496558/Claude-Levi-Strauss.html
Context: The idea behind structuralism is that there are things we may not know but we can learn how they are related to each other. This has been used by science since it existed and can be extended to a few other studies — linguistics and mythology — but certainly not to everything.
The great speculative structures are made to be broken. There is not one of them that can hope to last more than a few decades, or at most a century or two.

“Some people say, "How can you live without knowing?" I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing. That is easy. How you get to know is what I want to know.”

Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All

lecture I: "The Uncertainty of Science"
The Meaning of It All (1999)

“How was I supposed to know what’s real and what’s not? It feels like I’m the only one who doesn’t know the difference.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

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Kenneth E. Boulding 163

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