Sumber ilustrasi: Magnific
11 Mei 2026 11.58 WIB – Akar
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Desanomia [11.05.2026] If we continue this thought experiment by asking a further question: how do knowledge and systems of knowledge develop within these two communities? We may very likely imagine something like this:
In the first community, knowledge develops close to everyday life experience. Knowledge emerges from direct involvement with nature, seasons, social relations, work, and various events faced together. Because of that, knowledge is contextual and attached to the concrete life of the community. People know something because they live within it, not because they study it as a separate object.
The development of knowledge in the first community takes place through repetition of experience. When a certain way is considered successful in facing a particular condition, that way is inherited as custom. Knowledge survives through stories, examples, practices, rituals, and collective memory. What is transmitted is not only information, but a way of life.
Because knowledge lives within human beings and social relations, the knowledge system of the first community is dispersed in nature. There is no strict separation between knowledge, ethics, work, belief, and everyday life. Agricultural knowledge may mix with knowledge of weather, customs, food, and social relations. All of these, form one unified life experience.
Changes in knowledge within the first community usually happen slowly. Something is accepted not mainly because it is new, but because it has proven capable of maintaining the continuity of community life. Stability is more important than acceleration of change. Knowledge is tested through time and continuity of practice.
In the second community, knowledge develops through a different process. Because problems are faced through the creation of tools and systems, knowledge begins to be separated from direct experience and transformed into an object that can be arranged, recorded, classified, and independently developed. Knowledge no longer lives only within human beings, but is transferred into writing, numbers, images, archives, and various storage media.
From here, a more structured knowledge system emerges. Observation is separated from belief, measurement is separated from subjective experience, and methods are created so that knowledge can be re-tested by others. Knowledge is no longer mainly inherited through closeness of life, but through institutions such as schools, libraries, laboratories, and universities.
Because knowledge can be stored outside human beings, the development of knowledge in the second community takes place much faster. Discoveries from previous generations do not disappear together with the death of individuals, but can become the basis for the next discoveries. Knowledge begins to become accumulative in character. Each generation can begin from a higher point compared to the previous generation.
The knowledge system of the second community also tends to produce specialization. Fields of knowledge are separated into increasingly detailed disciplines: mathematics, physics, economics, engineering, biology, and so on. This separation allows very deep development, but at the same time makes knowledge increasingly fragmented.
As a result, different characters of knowledge emerge. In the first community, knowledge is integrated with life and aims at maintaining the continuity of collective existence. In the second community, knowledge develops into a productive force capable of actively transforming the world through technology, organization, and system engineering.
These differences also change the position of human beings toward the world. In the first community, human beings tend to learn to adapt themselves to an already existing order of life. In the second community, human beings begin to see the world as something that can be mapped, measured, predicted, and transformed through knowledge.
Because of that, the development of the knowledge systems of these two communities actually shows two major directions in the development of human civilization. The first develops the depth of living experience together with the world. The second develops the capacity to externalize knowledge into systems that can be enlarged, accelerated, and used to expand human capability beyond the limits of direct experience itself.
How about your community? How does knowledge and systems of knowledge develop there? (njd)
Note: This article was made as part of a dedicated effort to bring everyday life around us to our minds.
