Types of Knowledge
Knowledge can be classified upon a priori knowledge, which is obtained without needing to observe the world, and a posteriori or empirical knowledge, which is only obtained after observing the world or interacting with it in some way.
Often knowledge is gained by combining or extending other knowledge in various ways. Isaac Newton famously wrote: "If I have seen further... it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". (This in order to mollify Robert Hooke) to prevent a dispute.
Inferential knowledge is based on reasoning from facts or from other inferential knowledge such as a theory. Such knowledge may or may not be verifiable by observation or testing. The distinction between factual knowledge and inferential knowledge has been explored by the discipline of general semantics.
Read more about this topic: Descriptive Knowledge
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“... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
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“The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)