codifiable knowledge
While a practitioner over-emphasizes the importance and the share of non-codifiable knowledge in his field, an academician does the exact opposite. The latter's behaviour is understandable since
1) Only what is codifiable can be transferred to students inside a classroom environment, in a short duration of time.
2) Due to its higher level of generality and explicitness the codifiable knowledge has greater scientific value.
Practitioners, on the other hand, ignore the successful academic codifications at their own peril. Since most can not help making their own attempts at codification, they often end up reinventing the wheel or coining some awkward terminology.
Here are two examples from the finance world. I am sure one can find plenty of examples from other fields as well:
- McComish coins the term "anti-cash" in his book Anti-Logic
- Soros invents the term "reflexivity" in his book Alchemy of Finance
The former concept is awkward and unenlightening. The latter was codified in academia a long time ago. It was sad to hear Soros describing his finding as a major philosophical discovery.
1) Only what is codifiable can be transferred to students inside a classroom environment, in a short duration of time.
2) Due to its higher level of generality and explicitness the codifiable knowledge has greater scientific value.
Practitioners, on the other hand, ignore the successful academic codifications at their own peril. Since most can not help making their own attempts at codification, they often end up reinventing the wheel or coining some awkward terminology.
Here are two examples from the finance world. I am sure one can find plenty of examples from other fields as well:
- McComish coins the term "anti-cash" in his book Anti-Logic
- Soros invents the term "reflexivity" in his book Alchemy of Finance
The former concept is awkward and unenlightening. The latter was codified in academia a long time ago. It was sad to hear Soros describing his finding as a major philosophical discovery.
