Areas of Knowledge (Redux)

Last night, one of my former students who knows me well enough decided to play the game. He asked me, "So, how do you define 'area of knowledge'?"

So I told him how I defined it, from an information point of view. An area of knowledge is a set of interpreted data points which broadly share the same kind of origin and/or derivation, and the same kind of methodology of collection, retention and interpretation. The means of justification for each of these interpreted data points (information 'bits') is also reasonably similar, and the points are related to form a coherent body of information. This body therefore consists of knowledge and can be considered to be a somewhat continuous space in the knowledge realm — hence, 'area of knowledge'.

Of course, it is quite possible to define 'area of knowledge' based on empirical evidence. You can look at constructs that people say are areas of knowledge and then say that an area of knowledge is something which is similar to those constructs. This method is like teaching people what a triangle is by looking at things which are triangles, rather than defining 'triangle' and seeing if the construct under examination matches the definition.

By this second method, you can say History, Chemistry, Computing, Law (and so on) are areas of knowledge. Then if you encountered something like Theology, you would have to decide if it were an area of knowledge or not based on its similarity to the others. That's actually not as easy as it seems, although I have in the past demonstrated how Theology is like Mathematics (or vice versa).