Thursday, May 26, 2005

Of knowledge and the hemispheres of the brain

Read something interesting in an article/research in this month's MIT Sloan Review today. The authors/researchers say that while in the western culture/philosophy, knowledge is defined as something visible, one's analytical abilities and especially the ability to articulate one's analysis and thoughts in the written form, in eastern culture/philosophy, knowledge is tacit, invisible, and in the head and those that are expressed (verbal or written) is but at the periphery of one's knowledge!

OK! In other words, the west perhaps associates knowledge with the left brained whereas the east associates it with the right-brained. Explains the wisdom that our ancestors had...nothing written, but passed on in the form of, sometimes, incomprehensible practices (what we consider to be a superstition at times) from one generation to another....!

Update - 27th May - I forgot to mention - The article's purpose was to point out that KM strategies should take into consideration and account for the fact that knowledge itself is seen differently in different cultures and processes and tools used should thus cater to the difference in perceptions...

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