Double bind

Knowledge and knowhow are a pair of notions that have strong links between each other. It is a challenge to see 2 knowledge systems, knowledges, to co-exist sometimes for a very long time. Medicine is a good example. The traditional Chinese medicine continues to exist in parallel to the western style science based medicine. It remains a challenge to analyse the effectiveness, efficiency and equality each system can provide. In terms of public health the border between knowledge and knowhow becomes more blurred. The knowledge about diseases needs to be transferred into knowhow of how to prevent the disease to the population at large. This is a steep challenge as the persistence of alcohol abuse, smoking habits and other drugs abuses show on a global scale. Knowledge alone on the negative consequences is far from enough to prevent abuse. The thin and blurred line between use and abuse of pharmaceutical products equally challenges our traditional views on knowledge and knowhow. In a knowledge graph knowledge would figure, for example, in the core and knowhow as a satellite on the periphery. However, despite the strong link between these 2 notions, knowhow has a lot of additional links to topics like health or yin and yang. Knowhow has a basic link also to notions like memory (techniques) or even war (equipment). The more abstract notion of knowledge, “le savoir”, has been seen for a long time superior to the less abstract notion of knowhow, “savoir faire”. Polymaths have been identified for touching on several fields of knowledge with little concern for the practical side of things, despite the fact that Leonardo da Vinci combined many fields of science of his time to improve technology of his time including visions for the future. The double bind link exists in the recursive element of a link between 2 notions. Rather than denying its existence we have a lot to do to incorporate the more complicated links into our scientific knowledge and the more practical knowhow.