A map/diagram of human knowledge...

[Rasputin]

Hello all...

 

My story is very complicated, I'm a quite disturbed individual...

See, when I read an interesting article in a newspaper or a pop-science journal I immediatly get melancholic and depressed about the fact that I can't get all the knwoledge in the world. Socrates pretty much summed it up by saying that the more he learned, the more he realized how little he knew...

 

I know that I will never be able to know EVERYTHING, but I would like to die trying. For this, I need to know what areas of knwoledge humans developed over thousand of years. I'm talking about everything from religious studies to arts and literature...

Wikipedia has those "portals" on many subjects. Problem with Wiki is that it's like an endless loop. You walk into one portal and you can jump via links form one article to the next, endlessly. It's not very hierarchical (spelling?) see?

The closest thing I've found so far is this: http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/Map/Map.html

 

I would appreciate any comments on the subjects, any suggestions... I know this seems like a hit-and-run post, but I promise I will be back to check it out, this subject bothers my mind most of my waking hours, unfortunatly.

[npts2020]

Unfortunately, you live in a period of human history where it is pretty much impossible to learn the entire breadth of human knowledge. Even if you already knew everything humans knew now, it is doubtful you would have time enough to read and understand everything that is put out on a daily basis by humans. Maybe someday it will be possible to just "download" everything into your brain but until then you will just have to accept being a human and try to focus in particular areas of interest.

[Mokele]

To quote on of my scientific idols, Thomas Henry Huxley: "Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."

[iNow]

From a philosophical standpoint, there is a basic flaw in the premise. The idea that one can "learn everything" must posit that the whole of humanity's knowledge is static (that it is fixed). However, the whole of knowledge is dynamic, evolving with every moment, so by the time you'd learned "everything," there'd be new things which had been added to the whole of human knowledge which wouldn't yet know... ergo, you no longer would know everything.

 

You could only approach the whole of knowledge, never achieve it fully since it's a constantly moving target.

 

 

Further, how do you differentiate between "knowing" and "understanding?"

[Rasputin]

Thanks for calming me a bit...

 

Further, how do you differentiate between "knowing" and "understanding?"

 

I think that understanding is in the same family as knowing, only on a more advanced level. I'll give example from my life: I know (well, knew, at least) what musical scales corresponded to each other. If I would undestrand -why- they correspond (from a physical point of view, or musical point of view) I would be able to "give birth" to more knowledge (like a blueprint for an instument)..

 

Hope my thoughts are clear and make sense in english

[iNow]

Hope my thoughts are clear and make sense in english

 

They are very clear, indeed. I appreciate your desire to learn, and don't ever let anyone take that from you. If you reach for the stars, you might actually make it to the moon... My own approach (for me personally) is that it's better to understand something than simply to know it, which is why I asked. I find understanding to be much more rich and profound than simple knowing, but both are important.

 

Good luck in your quest. Maybe you'll be able to reach those goals more quickly by spending additional time here at SFN.

[timetes]

Thanks for calming me a bit...

 

Further, how do you differentiate between "knowing" and "understanding?"

 

I think that understanding is in the same family as knowing, only on a more advanced level. I'll give example from my life: I know (well, knew, at least) what musical scales corresponded to each other. If I would undestrand -why- they correspond (from a physical point of view, or musical point of view) I would be able to "give birth" to more knowledge (like a blueprint for an instument)..

 

Hope my thoughts are clear and make sense in english

 

well: knowing and understanding to me is.........logic

there are brilliant people out there with little or no logic

and there are not so smart people out there that have alot of logic.

 

 

for mokele: if you learn something new every day then it wasn't a wasted day:)

[insane_alien]

well, thats your own definition of logic and not the one used by science, knowing and understanding is commonly called 'knowledge and understanding' funnily enough.

 

logic involves appling a set of rules in order to deduce something where you lack knowledge and understanding.

 

for example, a scientist observes that if she lets a ball sit on a seemingly flat table, the ball rolls off. using logic, she deduces that the table is not as flat as it appears and that there must be a very slight lean. she would also get a spirit level to test this.

[bascule]

There's Cyc. Here's a visual representation of its ontology:

 

http://www.cyc.com/cyc/technology/whatiscyc_dir/whatdoescycknow

[AlphaCentauri]

 

This is just a 2D version

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www.filosofos.net/mapa/conocimiento.html

 

This one is in spanish, but offers some interactivity

 

AC

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws7XxUdvCtM&NR=1

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddDq-HYDyPs

 

if you find it interesting, there are lots of diagramas of this kind to share

 

AC

[AlphaCentauri]

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[Mokele]

Your subdivisions should be connected - it should look like a rat's nest more than a tree. For instance, I study biomechanics, the fusion of physics and biology. You also have evolution listed separately from biology, when in fact it's the guiding theory of all of biology.

 

In fact, it looks to me like you made the entire periphery of that ring by just paging through wikipedia and inserting vaguely related words.