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3 - Striving to Understand

from Part I - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2023

Raymond Hickey
Raymond Hickey
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
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Summary

Information, knowledge and understanding are closely related concepts but with clear differences between them. First of all, information refers to single facts and is independent of any human agent. It is a fact that the Sun is just under 150 million kilometres from the Earth; that is a piece of information. An individual may know that. Furthermore, this individual might know many other facts about our Solar System, and so have a coherent and structured amount of astronomical information, in which case one speaks of that person possessing knowledge about astronomy.

Type
Chapter
Information
Life and Language Beyond Earth , pp. 31 - 44
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Striving to Understand
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.004
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  • Striving to Understand
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.004
Available formats
×

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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Striving to Understand
  • Raymond Hickey, University of Limerick
  • Book: Life and Language Beyond Earth
  • Online publication: 16 September 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009229272.004
Available formats
×