Book Review: ‘Knowing What We Know’

Author Simon Winchester is a prolific writer with more than 30 books to his credit. He has a distinctive knack for storytelling that readers will appreciate. He can take a subject, which on the surface could be perceived as weighty, and bring it to life with personal anecdotes and fascinating historical tidbits woven into the fabric of his narrative.

“Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge, from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic” is a deep dive into what Plato defined as “justified true belief.” In other words, knowledge.

Winchester writes in the Prologue: “The arc of every human life is measured out by the ceaseless accumulation of knowledge. Requiring only awareness and yet always welcoming curiosity, the transmission of knowledge into the sentient mind is an uninterruptible process of ebbings and flowings.”

It’s these “ebbings and flowings” of the human mind as it confronts an often mysterious and ever unfolding world that Winchester focuses on from oral traditions passed on from generation to generation to modern day technology and the rise of artificial intelligence.

The author wonders if we’ve lost our ability to think for ourselves in “Know What We Know.” 
(Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

What Do We Know?

Winchester presents readers early on with this acronym: DIKW. He then prodigiously elaborates on the unique distinctions between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.

It is an intriguing dissection, raising for Winchester questions about the viability of knowledge when so much of our thinking has been eliminated with technology. Over the centuries, discoveries like the calculator and computer have decreased the math calculations we need to know; a machine will do it for you. Why learn facts when you can Google them?

And what of navigating by the stars or using a compass or sextant? The launch in 1978, nearly 50 years ago, of The Global Positioning System (GPS) significantly changed all that. Location, location, location, it’s now at our fingertips.

Winchester takes readers from Mesopotamian clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform pictographs around 3100 B.C. to today’s touchscreens. It’s an incredible journey that intersects science, history, and culture. Along the way there are significant events and dozens of human stories from Aristotle and Confucius to Johannes Gutenberg, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Albert Schweitzer, with lesser-known individuals like celebrated Chinese polymath Shen Gua, who wrote a vast number of scientific books from astronomy to zoology.

Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee is credited with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989. His first web page only had 26 pages. Now, there are millions.

As a writer, I found the author’s section on the development of word processing to be particularly enlightening. All the features that we have at our fingertips, whether italicizing, underlining, or spell checking, has evolved at razor speed. Now, as you’re typing, the editing feature will automatically complete word changes and clarifications. Linking possibilities seem endless, and storage is often in the Cloud.

The author wonders what computers have done to our ability to hold knowledge, in “Know What We Know.”  (Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

The book moves along in a logical way through the centuries as more and more “cooked information” (the author’s quick definition of knowledge) is added, absorbed, and sometimes lost in the quest toward wisdom. He does diverge, but his occasional narrative jaunts off the beaten path are never dull and always add to his informative and buoyant text.

Winchester’s obvious intellect and congeniality comes through in his writing. Readers will find his discourses highly entertaining, insightful, often humorous,  entirely pleasurable, and ever thought provoking.

Who doesn’t want to be thought of as wise, particularly as one ages?

Taking Strain Off the Brain

From the earliest methods of acquiring, storing, and transmitting knowledge, Winchester posits questions of where we are today with vast amounts of knowledge only a click away. We’ve gone from oral stories shared to inscribed stone, to encyclopedias, to Wikipedia. Along the way perhaps we’ve lost our ability to think for ourselves, as so much of it is done for us.

Who have we become is a question considered in “Know What We Know.” 
(Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

This “taking strain off the brain” poses challenges. On the one hand, AI aficionados could argue that the brain is now freed for more luxurious thought unburdened with acute comprehension skills. Naysayers would argue that, like the development of the atomic bomb, perhaps treading carefully in this new age is warranted: Wisdom is needed more than ever.

Winchester explores themes of what rational humans are becoming. What good is knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? Can there be information without wisdom?

I thought it particularly noteworthy that Winchester’s book is dedicated to Harold Mann (1902–1982). Mann was a geography teacher for 40 years at Hardy’s School in Dorchester, Dorset and Winchester’s geography teacher.

He described Mann in an interview as a “tweedy sort of chap who knew his way around the world” and was very congenial. Winchester went on to acquire a geology degree from Oxford, and one of his first stints was working in Uganda along the Congo border. He was fascinated with the area and was a climber then.

During this time, he followed the writings of historian and travel writer Jan Morris. Eventually, ended up as a reporter for the Guardian and his writing career was launched: One inquisitive mind had connected with another to a happy end.

The beauty and hopefulness of the human mind is ever-present in this read. Even with the rise of intelligent machines, Winchester portends an optimism for humankind.

Author Simon Winchester does a deep dive into the human search for knowledge.

‘Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge from Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic’
By Simon Winchester
Barnhill Press Ltd (HarperCollins Publishers), April 25, 2023
Hardcover: 432 pages