Shared Knowledge And Personal Knowledge

From the very first moment we are born, or perhaps even before that, we start gaining knowledge through using different ways of knowing. We learn from the others by absorbing shared knowledge as much as we grow our own understandings and establish personal knowledge. While shared knowledge refers to knowledge which is made of collaboration of many and hence is mostly or totally objective and widely accepted, personal knowledge is unique to each individual and is usually subjective by its nature. These two types of knowledge exist in parallel and they often influence each other. In addition, shared knowledge can experience advance and change over period of time, and personal knowledge may be influenced accordingly. Examples of shared knowledge shaping personal knowledge can be found in two contrasting areas of knowledge, Natural Sciences and History. Natural Sciences is an area of knowledge which explores the physical world to gain further understanding of the surroundings and the nature. In natural sciences, the scientific method is adopted in order to make a statement. The steps include presentation of a problem, making a hypothesis and prediction, testing, peer review, publication replication or falsification, establishment of theory and corrections and modification. Then, finally a law can be established only when all of these steps have been processed. These steps mainly concern the reasons as their way of knowledge, which makes knowledge in natural science shared