Knowledge: does it really exist?

So many universities have vision or mission statements based around the notion that they are in the business of “knowledge transfer”.

It always seems to me a very doubtful proposition.

Ever since I encountered the work of Karl Popper, I’ve been less than entranced by the idea of “knowledge”. It seems like practically every day that some apparent certainty, some aspect of “knowledge” or other, is overturned and replaced by new thinking.

In truth, the best one can say for the new formulation is that it may represent our Best Current Thinking. Even the most significant – Newton, Darwin, Einstein – they all developed ideas that had the ring of final truth. Not so.

So much more open to creative new possibilities, Best Current Thinking. So restrictive, knowledge.

Is it possible for universities to let go of all that emphasis on certainty and embrace something more open-ended?

“What is now proved was once only imagin’d”

Where is the heartbeat of our universities? I recently did a trawl of their websites to check out what lies at the centre of their vision and mission statements.

Most are focused on knowledge transfer and learning, which I guess is not so surprising.

For me, it’s something of a shock to discover how few of them recognise the central importance of creativity, of discovery, of imagination. The artist-poet William Blake’s line, “What is now proved was once only imagin’d,” really nails the issue.

Without the idea in the first place, there would be no “knowledge” to transfer. As Rosamund Stone and Benjamin Zander put it in The Art of Possibility: “It’s all invented.” Everything.

Behind every research “question”, there is always an idea – though in many cases it’s not articulated.

What can be done to redress the balance?