Q.3. Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow:

Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a new experience in the system of concepts based upon our old experiences. Understanding comes when we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possible a direct, unmediated contact with the new, the mystery, and moment by moment, of our existence. The new is the given on every level of experience – given perceptions, given emotions and thoughts, given states of unstructured awareness, given relationships with things and persons. The old is our home-made system of ideas and word patterns. It is the stock of finished articles fabricated out of the given mystery by memory and analytical reasoning, by habit and automatic associations of accepted notions. Knowledge is primarily knowledge of these finished articles. Understanding is primarily direct awareness of the raw material. Knowledge is always in terms of concepts and can be passed on by means of words or other symbols. Understanding is not conceptual and therefore cannot be passed on. It is an immediate experience, and immediate experience can only be talked about (very inadequately), never shared. Nobody can actually feel another’s pain or grief, another’s love or joy, or hunger. And similarly nobody can experience another’s understanding of a given event or situation. There can, of course, be knowledge of such an understanding, and this knowledge may be passed on in speech or writing, or by means of other symbols. Such communicable knowledge is useful as a reminder that there have been specific understandings in the past, and that understanding is at all times possible. But we must always remember that knowledge of understanding is not the same thing as the understanding which is the raw material of that knowledge. It is as different from understanding as the doctor’s prescription for pencitin is different from penicillin.


Questions:


1. How is knowledge different from understanding?
Knowledge is different from understanding in a sense that knowledge comes with addition of new experiences based on old ones and it can be shared easily while understanding is the name of consciousness with new perceptions.

2. Explain why understanding cannot be passed on.
Understanding cannot be passed on because it is not centered to mere ideas and concepts like knowledge, but it is one type of feeling and feelings cannot be passed on.

3. Is the knowledge of understanding possible? If it is, how may it be passed on?
Knowledge of understanding is possible and it can be passed on in the form of speech, writing, and symbols.

4. How does the author explain that knowledge of understanding is not the same thing as the understanding?
Author explained with example that knowledge is as different from understanding as doctor’s prescription for pencitin is different from penicillin.

5. How far do you agree with the author in his definitions of knowledge and understanding? Give reasons for your answer?
I agree with the definitions given by author about understanding and knowledge. He differentiated both things in such a way that no more misconceptions exist in understanding both the things similar.