Where do we store our wealth of knowledge?
Evolution gave us a nervous system,
a brain, wherein we learn our environment
and attempt to respond to change.
Our brain holds memory
wherein we store our learning for later use.
We learned to create artifacts,
utilitarian and coded,
that, once made,
hold our knowledge.
Nests and tools,
paintings and hearths,
books and buildings
may survive our death
to be inherited by following generations
that may use and build upon this heritage.
Our life-time learning,
our artifacts,
and our biological heritage
combine to organize our culture.
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We can classify human knowledge by where we store it. Carl Sagan wrote of genetic and extragenetic locations.
Genetic knowledge is written in the nucleotides in the chromosomal DNA molecules. As life evolved its forms became ever more complex. Genetic code had to contain more information. Humankind has more genetic information than most other mammals, which have more than amphibians, which have more than protozoa. Depending on mutations and natural selection, this genetic form of knowledge grows slowly and is limited by its container, the chromosome.
Extragenetic knowledge resides outside of our chromosomes. Much is written during our lifetime in the memory of our brain. Because we can learn and be taught, our species can adapt quickly to problems and opportunities presented by our environment. But brain knowledge dies with each individual unless she has somehow passed it on to someone else. It is still sharply limited by the capacity of a brain to learn and apply information during one lifetime.
Some extragenetic knowledge, however, is also extrasomatic; it is stored in artifacts outside our bodies. Utilitarian objects and coded messages augment our ability to capture and use energy. Humankind does not have exclusive access to such knowledge, but we are the experts. Libraries are obvious examples, but tools, houses, and other useful objects contain knowledge. These inanimate objects may have a usefulness that is independent of the life span of the people who create them. The objects tend to accumulate, offering each successive generation an opportunity to be more knowledgeable (wealthier) than the previous one. Nor is it necessary for the user to know as much as the creator.
To use our hammer of steel and wood
we must know to grow and manage arm and hand.
We must learn how and why to wield our hammer.
Yet, we need not know how
to make or shape steel,
to select wood
nor make a handle.
Someone put this into our hammer,
so we can use without knowing.
Someone Put This Into Our Hammer
I classify knowledge by location as: biological knowledge, brain knowledge, and artifactual knowledge.
Biological Knowledge. It includes the genetic codes, most of the living tissue of each living creature, and any energy immediately at the disposal of this knowledge. For an earthworm it includes himself, the soil that surrounds him, that is about to be consumed, and that that is being consumed. For the biosphere, it includes the biomass plus most of the inanimate materials and gases just above and below the Earth's surface, and beneficial energy arriving at Earth from the sun and elsewhere.
Brain Knowledge. It includes information and skills learned by individuals from their environment during their lifetime as well as any energy immediately at the disposal of this knowledge. For the human who has learned to swim and dive for clams, it includes the water supporting her and the clam she is about to grasp. For the biosphere, it includes any increase in biomass or captured energy that is due to brain knowledge -for example, the fish stocked and propagating in a natural lake that had no fish until knowledgeable humans intervened.
Artifactual Knowledge. It includes knowledge outside our bodies, and any energy immediately at the disposal of this knowledge. For a cold human it includes his stove that incorporates brain knowledge of metallurgy and the science of burning. It includes the firewood in and immediately nearby his stove, as well as the food he is about to cook, and his cookbook. For the biosphere, it includes a man-made fish pond, the solar panels on a space vehicle, and the energy that each captures.
Knowledge organizes and reorganizes the world. Biological knowledge sustains basic processes and carries the fundamental codes of life. Brain knowledge augments the amount of energy that an individual, a group, an ecosystem, a species, or biosphere can put to beneficial use. Artifactual knowledge can harness and release vast quantities of energy that the body and mind cannot manage directly.
Brain knowledge increases rapidly for each new individual. An ignorant baby becomes a knowledgeable adult. We organize ourselves so that we can pass much wealth from individual to individual and from generation to generation through example, oral tradition, ceremony, song, dance, and vocabulary. Much brain knowledge also comes from direct personal experience. This wealth accumulates much faster than does genetic change, but it is inefficient. It usually passes to only a small group before the teacher dies. It may be forgotten or misunderstood. Much brain wealth dies with each individual.
Artifactual knowledge increased slowly in the early millennia of mankind. One generation left simple hand tools in wood, stone or bronze for the next generation. Supplemented by a transfer of brain knowledge through teaching and demonstration, these artifacts often retained their usefulness over generations. Each new generation could not only make new tools but use those accumulated by earlier generations. When nomadic groups converted to stationary communities they could keep more of the tools made by past generations. We still use simple hand tools. They often help us build complex machinery and electronic equipment that in turn we can use to manufacture better, less-costly simple hand tools. Our artifactual culture builds upon itself.
Written language is itself an artifact (in code) that helps us store instructions for using and building other artifacts. Instructions might otherwise be forgotten or severely limited in distribution. Using this coded artifact, our brain knowledge can quickly and temporarily grow to suit the need at hand. We only need to know how to read the language.
I illustrate the interworking of the forms of knowledge with a simplified view of the ancient Egyptians and their culture that flourished along the Nile River. They relied without thinking about it upon their biological knowledge to keep their bodies functioning long enough to reproduce themselves and to accumulate and transfer brain knowledge. With their brain knowledge they could understand the seasons, the floods, the principles of agriculture and mechanics. Combining biological and brain knowledge, specialized engineers could build dikes and irrigation systems. These artifacts enabled many who knew nothing of engineering to increase their food and fiber production. In the process, Egyptians developed new strains of plants by selecting seeds from those plants that took best advantage of this man-altered growing system. These plants, though having their own genetic wealth, were living artifacts storing extrasomatic knowledge for the ancient Egyptians and we who follow. A complex system of biological, brain, and artifactual knowledge built an increasingly productive culture that gathered ever more energy unto itself.
In a purist sense, the three forms of knowledge are downwardly dependent. Biological knowledge came first; it can exist without the more advanced forms of knowledge. Brain knowledge evolved with increasingly sophisticated nervous systems. It obviously depends upon the genetic code of the body that hosts it. Artifactual knowledge exists outside the body. However, without brain knowledge and biological knowledge there would be no one to take advantage of it. It would cease to be wealth.
This hierarchy of dependence is valid, but difficult to apply. Much biological wealth depends on brain knowledge or artifactual knowledge. Pigeons can exist without humankind, but their population would be much lower without the artifacts of man, city buildings. Holstein cattle owe their unique characteristics to careful breeding by humans. They are living artifacts for humankind, but biological wealth for themselves. Astronomy is mostly brain knowledge, but much of it depends upon artifacts such as telescopes. In our complex patterned biosphere the forms of knowledge interact and interdepend.
