The dynamics of knowledge

Knowledge is constituted by the ways in which people categorize, code, process and impute meaning to their experiences. 1 This is as much true of ‘scientific’ as of ‘non-scientific’, everyday forms of knowledge. We should not therefore equate knowledge with some professional, specialized or esoteric set of data or ideas. It is something that everybody possesses, even though the grounds for belief and the procedures for validation of knowledge-claims will vary. Nor should the concept of knowledge carry with it the implication of ‘discovering the real facts’, as if they lay ‘out there’ ready for uncovering. Such a view is based upon an ‘objectivism’ which assumes ‘the world is composed of facts and that the goal of knowledge is to provide a literal account of what the world is like’ (Knorr-Cetina 1981a: 1–3).