This is excerpt from what I initially wrote in an email, then on Google buzz. A couple of responses from friends and further response from me is also added here
I see Knowledge as two parts.. Information and Wisdom (Wisdom might not be the right word here..).. Information is the set of knowledge already available to us.. Wisdom is capability to create knowledge.. Information is directly proportional to amount of time we spend with books/net etc, Wisdom is directly proportional to time we spend in thinking and more importantly developing the capability of detaching ourselves from any bias.. Information increases when we answer "How?" about things, Wisdom answers "Why?".. These days people don’t spend much time thinking because there is lots of information available.. Our muscles have a tendency to develop (and to keep working) if we use them.. Due to information bombardment these days (Media/Net/overloaded workloads), majority of people are information muscular with relatively weaker wisdom muscles.. This concept applies to many fields e.g. take Religion. When it comes to religion, majority (whether Muslims, Christians, Atheists or whatever sect they belong to) just don’t want to analyze the basics.. People just study a lot of literature on their religion or of many religions and then just accept the theories that suite them.. It’s a domain where a lot of information is available, but if someone detaches himself from any bias while analyzing and spends time thinking, he most probably (though not necessarily) will converge to what is the better explanation of reality..
Response 1:
Salam n jazakAllah khair for sharing..
but I dare to differ on this one point that 'knowledge can be created.'
As far as info is concerned; one got to choose, either to be an information-hoarder, or an information-interpreter.
A simple increment in info, could lead to breakthroughs for interpreters, while for mere gatherers / hoarders it might not even be worthy of mention.
Famous example is an apple fell from a tree...yada yada.
And even though interpretation & gathering go hand in hand, gathering for the sake of gathering is a fallacy, but gathering for sake of interpretation is the cool way through.
Important thing is; not to discourage gathering, but to encourage development of interpretation muscle along with gathering. Good books are a great source of increasing interpretation-power. If read properly, you might come across a totally different dimension of looking at the same info you knew long back. Might even prove to be your interpretation quantum leap!
Actually, historically the biggest evolution in understanding came from knowledge transfer, i.e., information was interpreted and the interpretation was transfered to next generation, this lead to breakthoughs.
Sadly, for gatherers even the most fabulous interpreted information might be a bunch of words to memorize. Examples are, E=mc2, Shannon's capacity theorem, Maxwell's equation, etc.
On the more -
There ain't no doubt that we're allowed to interpret from Quran & Sunnah, however, we must follow the guidelines laid by the scholars of early ages. Otherwise, our pride of power of interpretation-muscle will certainly lead us astray. There're several examples, to wit; Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Ghulam Ahmed Parvez, Ghamdi, Mirza Gulam Ahmed etc & et al.
The idea is to do independent analysis & interpretation, & then match it with the interpretation of traditional / classical scholars of early generations. Why not to get the benifit of what has already been interpreted, & to understand the art of interpretation from those of the earliest generations who were good at it, & rightly so?
A person might make mistakes in his interpretations even after learning from great scholars -- so what -- but its damages would be far less than the one who arrogantly ignores & outright rejects the interpretations of the Sahaba / past scholars of Haqq, just to comeup with one's own so-called logical ones.
Response 2:
Quite right (this was about first response). As an additional remark, I somehow believe that internet should be used as a reference only; i.e., long hours should still be spent with books and not on the internet. Internet should be used for reading small contents of information while the books should be used to delve deep. Then, we must spend time with ourselves alone, talking with our inner cores, and that might give us the right balance of information gathering and interpretation.
My Response:
Same thing can be put differently if we differentiate between "Depth of thought" and "Breadth of thought". It is said that in chess a person who can think one level deeper than the other should win more frequently. This is different from "Breadth of thought". What I call Breadth is not merely information gathering. It is understanding the understanding of others. What I put in depth category is the ability to connect a sequence of dots in our mind "for the first time" and "on our own".
In reality, there might be no person with zero average depth or zero average breadth (I have used word "average" here because if a person's average is tilted towards breadth axis, he might still be depth-oriented in some specific domains). The average depth-breadth ratio is moving towards breadth-axis these days firstly because of the fast life and secondly because collective human growth has evolved to a level that depth-focus often leads to re-inventing the wheel. So there is a minimum breadth requirement that we have to cover in schools, colleges and universities to reach to a level to be able to add value towards depth (PHDs might be more aware of this thing). The downside of this breadth focus is an inability to differentiate between "right" and "wrong" when the difference gets subtle (i.e. One lever deeper than a person can think). When it is so, people generally settle for what suites them.