The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World

by Iain McGilchrist

Many languages have distinct words for knowing, dependent on the sense in which one can be said to know. In Latin sapere is distinguished from cognoscere, in French savoir from connaître, in German wissen from kennen. In each case the first indicates propositional knowledge, ‘knowing that’ such and such is the case, which requires no experience; while the second indicates knowledge of someone, some place, or other unique aspect of the world, directly from experience. Ultimately, in fact, all knowledge derives from experience, for which there are no propositions – thus sapere bows to cognoscere, savoir to connaître, wissen to kennen, propositional knowledge to knowledge by encounter. When we say we know something, what we mean is that we see that it is like something else that we reckon we already know better, from a previous encounter. And those ‘somethings else’, followed far enough, return us in every case to embodied experience.