Information Vs Knowledge Vs Wisdom – Science & The Application Of It


With “The New Thinking For Agriculture” for PH Agriculture under Secretary of Agriculture William Dar/Manong Willie, along with “The 8 Paradigms” that comprise it, and being a BSA graduate, you already know my cup of tea. It intrigues me that Bruce Tolentino, a friend of Agriculture, UP Economics, is sharing on Facebook Richard Feynman’s Information Knowledge thesis (above).(wisdom image from Ubiquity University[1])

As it happens, my ultimate measure of knowledge is its usefulness to society – against the 4 elements of sustainability proclaimed by FAO: technical feasibility, economic viability, environmental soundness, and social acceptability. Then, knowledge must be transformed into wisdom!

The ways I see them:

Information is any piece of report of what has or have been observed.

Knowledge is bits & pieces of information that have been related together to make one sense or another. Sorry, but what is depicted in Mr Feynman’s expression via text, lines and balloons as “knowledge” is too complicated to be explained by ordinary mortals – only a supercomputer can interpret the knowledge contained therein!

Now, what is the application of Feynman’s view of knowledge? Not pieces or sets of knowledge that may be expressed as a technology or a system.

Beyond Technology or System, what can you construct out of Knowledge? Knowledge sets that can be elevated into Wisdom. This can happen of course backwards – you arrive at the Wisdom first, by insight, and then find an explanation by way of known knowledge bits & pieces. The whole came before the parts!

How do I apply such thinking to the New PH Agriculture that is in the mind of Manong Willie?

Information vs Knowledge – If you want to criticize the “New Thinking For Agriculture,” you have to understand first how those 8 paradigms make up the whole PH Agriculture, then you may say the whole set still lacks one or two things.


I, as a creative writer, am now going to employ Mr Feynman’s Information vs Knowledge construct for others to understand what is creative writing:

(1)   I start with bits & pieces of Information. I collect them via research.

(2)   Then I construct new or improved knowledge from those bits & pieces of information I have gathered, or thought.

(3)   My handling of knowledge sets may not be as sophisticated as Mr Feynman illustrates it, but I certainly hope that the knowledge constructed is usable enough in society.

Applying now: Is land ownership wisdom? It certainly is composed of sets of knowledge: piece of land, necessity for working it with tools & equipment etc.

Question: How do you elevate land ownership into wisdom, so that it may serve a bigger whole than simply the landowner? 

Answer: You elevate it by destroying it – or, rather, not insisting on it but insisting on consolidating the function of each piece of land – into an organizational, operational whole, where say 100 hectares of 200 owners are managed and operated by a single group that represents the interests of the land owners. Land ownership is private good; land consolidation is social good.@517








[1] https://www.facebook.com/WisdomUniversity/



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