Who needs knowledge? The Aslib Annual Lecture

Abstract

I've tried, in thinking about this talk, to live up to that provocative title. ‘To proceed pulpitically’, as Lord Chesterfield would say, I would like to start with a text from Lord Melbourne, that wise old counsellor of Queen Victoria, and it runs like this, ‘I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macauley is of everything.’ To put that in a slightly different way, ‘In an uncertain world it is more important to understand than to know’. You may just be intrigued that the new science curriculum has come to a view which I hope will soon be published, that in teaching science to children from the age of five to sixteen, perhaps no more than 40 per cent of the weighting should be on what they actually learn in terms of knowledge and skills. Equally important — perhaps more so — is that they should acquire scientific method, the ability to observe, to infer, to induce and to deduce, to test their conclusions in real life and to communicate these conclusions. So I believe that in an uncertain world this phrase, that it is better to understand than to know, deserves to have a wider currency.

Citation

Benton, P. (1989), "Who needs knowledge? The Aslib Annual Lecture", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb051120