Paper Example on Production of Knowledge

Introduction

According to the Theory of Knowledge, humans are involved in the production of knowledge through two main ways: through passive observation and active experiments. Most of the newly produced knowledge is from the field of science hence raising a long-term debate on how the scientists come up with the findings. Notably, the generation of knowledge is sourced from either an individual (personal knowledge) or from a group (shared knowledge). However, it is argued that production of knowledge is more of a collaborative task than the work of an individual.

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Personal Production of Knowledge

Personal production of knowledge simple means that the generation of knowledge is based on an individual. Therefore, the individual uses his/her sense of perception, emotions, reasons, imaginations, and intuitions in the process of production of knowledge. This was common since antiquity when knowledge was generated by individuals mostly in philosophy and physics. For example, as in the case of Isaac Newton who was the sole discoverer gravity and the laws of gravity after a fruit fell off a tree and hit him. This depicts that the knowledge production of an individual solely depends critically on their personal experiences.

Individual production of knowledge is advantageous in that; the person involved focuses on the research without external influence. He is responsible for every step of the research and findings and therefore, he is in a position to explain everything to his audience without consultations. It also saves the time since there is no time for unnecessary discussions with colleges. If the knowledge produced is exceptional, then all the success is also attributed to the individual.

Production of knowledge at an individual level shows that the individual has to be constantly involved in practicals and recording of his/her experiences about a new concept about to be revealed to the public. The fact that human is to err, many shortcomings are likely to transpire from his experiments such as cases of inaccuracy in recordings, and erroneous calculations. These cases go unidentified hence higher risk of misinformed information released to the public.

There is a very high level of risks and uncertainties attributed to the individual production of knowledge. For example, in the case where the person falls is sick or dies, the production process declines greatly and, it becomes very difficult for any other person to continue with the research since the information was only confined to an individual. Such kinds of losses are unbearable because that knowledge is of great importance to the public.

Cases of demoralization are also evident when only one person is involved in the process. This is because; the research is not always simple for someone to carry through to end. At some point, it becomes very difficult to prove one's hypothesis, and because they have no one to share the pain with, the monotonous work drain them hence making them highly demoralized unlike where the work is carried out by a group.

According to Theory of Knowledge guide syllabus (18), personal production of knowledge is intimately bound up by individuals' circumstances such as life interests, values and is ultimately influenced by their perspective. This displays an individual production as a methodology of knowledge production in which there is too much emphasis on the subjective experiences and does not look at the construction of knowledge at a wider view of the world. This develops a tendency of knowledge being a personal tale with no proof and little or no analysis.

Additionally, the personal production of knowledge has very limited driving factors for its production. For instance, for individuals to develop a new concept, it may be a continuation of what learned through formal education, non-academic life experiences or out of the results of personal, academic research. These limitations show how difficult it could be for an individual trying to develop new knowledge to come up with any idea outside his/her circle of life. Additionally, the fact that the person did personal research shows how difficult it could be for him/her to explain his concept to people outside his linguistic background.

Production of Knowledge as a Collaborative Task

Knowledge generation being is one of the main tasks of research and science. Using a group of researchers in the generation is known to foster innovations and new creative ideas due to the combination of heterogeneous knowledge which ensures that there is a flow of information. Collaborative research, therefore, means that there is a massive interaction among the members, (either face to face, through phone calls or the internet) and the objects that connect them such as data, computers, papers and existing knowledge.

Knowledge is best produced if the task is carried out by a collaborative group of individuals. This insinuates that the production of knowledge does not wholly rest on the contributions on one individual since everyone is a participant. This means that task distribution is evident within members of the group putting the individuals in a position to work in bits according to what each has been assigned, and ensures that they give their best. For instance, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect as a photon collides with a metal electron, Planck discovered packets of energy and Maxwell discovered that light is an electromagnetic wave. The success of the three scientists in their concepts was because they shared knowledge to enable them to support each other's concept. The long-run results are a quality knowledge released to the world.

Secondly, in the group of generation of knowledge, there must be a balance between cooperation and competition. The researchers will have to identify the individuals that they have already build trust in and the more the trust within a collection of researchers the higher the speed of their work. If the group exemplifies equality to all its members, then there will be reciprocity and the partners will be very active which eventually saves time within which a new phase of knowledge is released (Jansen et al. 2).

The collaboration methodology is always highly structured and systemic. This is because members work together with much confidence in each other about their findings due to high accountability among the group. This atmosphere eventually leads to the group to work under peer pressure where everyone has an internal desire not to let others down and hence a simultaneous motivation to work even when circumstances are not so favorable. This is contrary to the case of an individual who is doing a monotonous job and may even decide to stop working on it since he pleases no one.

Contrary to the personal production of knowledge where every detail revolves around an individual, there is much interdependency among the partners in a collaborative generation which reflects more successful innovation strategies. This is caused by developing a collaborative milieu and avoiding opportunities which give them diverse access to information brought by the partners as well as the social networks. This means that the experts venture into different fields of study, some of which are not within their field of interest, to find out any possible factor that has effects on their project. For example, physics experts group conducting scientific research about expansion and contraction of metals may send some of their colleges to do an environmental analysis. Here they can find how temperatures affect the expansion of conductors.

Collaborative knowledge production reduces the "bus factor" for the project. "Bus factor" represents of members who may face any accidents or even gets sick or leaves the group for whatever the reasons before the completion of research. This ensures that the production is continuous with or without one of the individuals since the others cover up the void. It also ensures that the right procedure is followed in the production of knowledge hence preventing any undocumented shortcuts taken by any member. This is because each member is obliged to conduct their research in a straightforward manner such that the information is clear to everyone and anybody can pick up at any point if necessary.

Contrary to personal knowledge production, there is always a faster project momentum as a result of unending morale when the production of knowledge is collaborative. Sometimes the projects do not correspond to the initially planned time span due to some technical issues. For example, a project estimated to be complete within a year may take as long as five years. This may cause a person carrying out the project individually to put it to a halt, but if there is at least an additional person, there will be still forward momentum.

However, the collective production of knowledge is not entirely perfect for it also faces some inevitable challenges. An example of a case where research involving several individuals was threatened was in Tartas where the communication style of one of the participants changed, making the others feel directly attacked. Additionally, in the case where there are strong constraints against free movement of researchers, they deny them a chance to discuss issues arising in the collaboration and especially in the cases where they need to see each other face to face (zittoun et al., 9).

Furthermore, rules governing the collaborative knowledge production are also dynamic; it changes with time. This, therefore, poses uncertainty to collaborations that have already been formed for long-term research to come up with certain knowledge. If in any chance these rules in future do not favor the collaboration, then, it will be a loss not only to the participants but also the expected recipients of the knowledge.

Conclusion

Conclusively, it is clear that the two methodologies used in the production of knowledge have both disadvantages and advantages. Notably, at some point, there is some dependency of collaborative production of knowledge on the individual production of knowledge. This is the case where the scientist involved in certain research do deep research by themselves and then later come together each with his/her own strongly supported findings. They then later join the heterogeneous information into the final knowledge. However, weighing the advantages of individual knowledge production against the advantages of collaborative production of knowledge, it is indisputable that the production of knowledge is always a collaborative task and never a product of the individual.

Work Cited

Jansen, Dorothea. et al. "Knowledge Production and The Structure of Collaboration Networks in Two Scientific Fields." (2008). http://www.netzwerk-exzellenz.uni-trier.de/filebase/upl-20110719100025.psm.

Knowledge in TOK. "Theory of Knowledge guide." https://www.sjsd.k12.mo.us/cms/lib/MO01001773/Centricity/Domain/3408//content/CourseContent_TOK.pdf

Zittoun, Tania. et al. "Collaborative Research, Knowledge and Emergence." (2013). http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/38689/1/Libfile_repository_Content_Cornish.%2C%20F_Collaborative%20research_Collaborative%20research%28lsero%29.pdf.