Knowledge is like truth, has what truth has; only knowledge implies the action of getting truth.

There is no such thing as a mind without knowing. To have mind, as I have said, is to have the power of being affected by a thing in terms of pleasure and pain. Every situation of mind is about something.

If we look at Harold Stuart, age four, looking at smoke, and being listless and fidgety, he is knowing something; his mind is being affected by something. Harold’s self is in touch with the smoke as a thing to be seen and smelt; and when Harold, curious about the smoke, puts his right hand through it, he can be said to have touched smoke.

Harold, then, knows smoke. The smoke is doing something to him. As far as the smoke is doing something to the self of Harold, he is knowing it.

Now Harold doesn’t know everything about the smoke. No one does, perhaps. Still, the boy is seeing that smoke has a certain color, has a kind of shape, moves a certain way, and smells a certain way. What the boy Harold then knows, can, to be more precise, be put this way:

1. Something about the color of smoke, as smoke was in the Stuart residence in Springfield, Illinois, of November 2, 1944;
2. Something about the shape of smoke, as smoke was, same place, same time;
3. Something about the motion of smoke;
4. Something about the smell of smoke;
5. Something about smoke as to Harold Stuart.

Now this “something” can be made even more precise. For the important thing about knowledge is just what is known. This thing which is known can always be seen as precise, definite. Knowledge, in a certain sense, is always absolute.

By this I mean, that if Harold Stuart’s older brother knows that a girl, Willa, has red hair, he knows that. He may not know very much more about Willa; in fact, he may not know anything more about her. But if the subject of Richard Stuart’s knowledge is put this way: “As to whether a girl, Willa Stevens, of Springfield, Illinois, has hair which can be described as red”—then Richard’s knowledge can be seen as covering the subject.

Suppose a subject was: “Whether it can be said that a person can see life as having change in it”—and only that is the subject—I repeat, only that—then the answer “Yes” can be absolutely true.

All knowledge, as knowledge of the thing which it is knowledge of, is absolute. As a further example of this, suppose somebody with bad eyes took an approaching stranger for his uncle in the twilight of 7 P.M. in a suburb of Philadelphia; and he said: “It seemed to me that a person coming down the lane at 7 P.M. was my uncle”—and if the subject is taken to be an aspect of what seemed to be so to a person at 7 P.M. in a suburb of Philadelphia—what I have quoted is absolutely true.

All knowledge can be seen as covering the subject, if the subject is made small enough, or precise enough. All truth is the whole truth about something; though, of course, not the whole truth about something else. For all truth is a truth about a thing; and everything can be seen as one, that is, complete.

However, if a person saw the arm of someone, and pretended to have seen the whole person, of course he would not be telling the truth about that. It follows that in the matter of our knowledge, the first thing to see is what we know.

It can be said by skeptics that we don’t know anything. It would be denied by some that we can even say we know our selves exist. So that is dangerous to say. But suppose we put it this way: There is a tendency on my part to think that my self seems to exist. The subject, then, is: “Whether there is a tendency on my part to say that my self seems to exist.” I think it can be said that the words “Yes, there is a tendency,” etc., to the statement or proposition I have quoted, cover the subject.

What all this comes to is that knowledge is both relative and absolute; just as a tree is large compared to a bush and small compared to a mountain: that is, it is both large and small.

A train is going at 100 miles an hour in New York State. It is certainly moving. As we talk, it is moving. But if, while the train is moving as fast as it is, we say: “The train going 100 miles an hour is now in Chenango County,” this statement about the moving train may be absolutely true. The subject of the statement can be put this way: “Whether it could be said at 4:15 P.M., by a resident of Chenango County, ‘A train going 100 miles an hour is now in Chenango County.’” If we don’t somehow elusively change the subject by asking where the train will be and where the train has been, it will be seen that the statement I have quoted is correct, or covers this subject.

What this comes to is, that for things to be moving—no matter how fast—they first have to be. A most speedy airplane, in motion, no more is and no less is, than a tired old dog, or moss, or an old stone, or a checkerboard, disused, hidden in a cupboard, and now there, three years after it was first hidden. Smoke which vanishes the next moment is. Whatever was, can be seen as being.

The fact that the boy Harold Stuart thought his mother was a cause of pain to him one morning in November, is a fact forever. Harold smiled at his mother three minutes later; but the earlier fact was still a fact.

It should be seen that all relativity, evanescence, vagueness, uncertainty, is based on isness. The relative is; the evanescent is; the vague is; the uncertain is; change is.

Now, a state of knowledge also is. Whatever is, is a thing. A thing, as thing, is the whole of that thing, all that the thing is. Therefore, knowledge, though about a thing, is also a thing. This being so, a situation of knowledge by itself, is a whole as such, an absolute as such; also relative.

Certainly there are kinds of knowledge, sizes of knowledge, values of knowledge. It is good to know more about a girl than that she has red hair. It is good to know more about a word than its pronunciation. It is good to know more about our selves than that we have skins. Yet all the statements I have given can be knowledge; placed rightly, are knowledge.

Knowledge is about everything. One of the big, sad, undesirable happenings in the field of thought has been the insufficient approach to the meaning of the word thing, and also to the meaning of the word everything. The knowledge of the shape of the head of a nail is just as much knowledge as a knowledge of Egyptian dynasties; and the knowledge that a baby has got a little mud on its little finger, is just as much knowledge as the knowledge of the history of mathematics under Napoleon. Things and knowing are in constant, endless reciprocity; and when knowing happens, it can be complete, absolute knowing about anything.

To understand the meaning of knowledge or knowing, it is well to see what is common in the word know in the following statements or the following thoughts, made and had by Henry Platt one September day last year in Annapolis:

1. I know that my wife loves me, but I just know I’ll never understand why she can say certain things to me.
2. I know more about tires now than I did last year; you see, Fred, I had to find out.
3. I don’t know art very much, but I know I don’t like too much talk about it.
4. I have to brush up on the American history I studied in high school and college; but I know that Lee has certain points as a general over Washington.
5. I don’t know just when Gladys will come in.
6. If I knew, Mary, where the dish you’re looking for was, I’d be glad to tell you.
7. I don’t know what the dream meant, and I don’t think anyone else does.
8. I don’t know what I’m here for, but I do know a banana split tastes good sometimes.
9. Sometimes I feel I know what I’m heading for; but do I really?
10. When I took the ether, I just didn’t know a thing.
11. I still know something about equations, and the knowledge comes in handy in my work.

Is there anything in common among all these uses of the word know? What is it, if there is? Is any knowing, as mentioned by Mr. Platt, less knowing than any other kind? Is his knowledge of tires and banana splits less knowing than his knowing about Washington or equations? Is Mr. Platt’s not knowing about a dish, or about when Gladys will get in, essentially different from his not knowing about dreams, or what he’s heading for?

It can be seen, just by looking, that all life, at any moment, is made up of knowing. The raptures of love have knowing in them. The taste of honeydew melon has knowing in it. The shaking of a person’s hand has knowing in it. The feeling of a raindrop falling on oneself has knowing in it. Physiology leads, has led, to knowing.

The whole world is made up of what we know and what we don’t know. So is every thing in the world. In considering a tree, we can see that the tree for us is what we know and what we don’t know. There is really no in-between. For what is half-known, or not understood, or uncertainly known, or dimly known, can, in turn, be divided into what we know and what we don’t know.

Now, what we know is a thing, because what we know, seen as a separate instance of reality, affects us. What we don’t know is also a thing, because that affects us, too. So in the dimmest situation of knowledge, what is occurring is a definite—at bottom—interaction of what-is-knowns, as things, and what-is-not-knowns, as things. As soon as we see a specific instance of what is known as a thing, it has autonomy, definiteness, absoluteness. What is not known, as a thing, also has. What is vague, mysterious, glamorous, suggestive, sultry, variable, is, then, an arrangement, in the long run, of two kinds of definiteness. Not only can knowledge be absolute, but lack of knowledge can be, too. In fact, if lack of knowledge can be absolute, knowledge would have to be absolute, too.

To be sure, knowledge and not-knowledge are relative. This can be taken for granted. Knowledge and not-knowledge can be seen as a relation of 1/4 and 3/4 as parts of 1. One-quarter, as part of 1, is relative to it. It is also relative to 3/4. But 1/4, taken as covering the situation of 1/4, is absolute. That is, there is nothing else in the world which is just 1/4. One-quarter is, then, a thing. This can be put in another way, by saying 1/4 is 100% of 1/4. Seen this way, it is an absolute.

Partial knowledge is, then, absolute knowledge, too. If there were 200 irregular verbs in a language, and we had heard of only 120, we would have a partial knowledge of the irregular verbs in that language. But 120 verbs can be seen as 3/5 of the verbs in the language. To know 3/5, then, of the irregular verbs in a language, is to know, absolutely, 120 verbs. For 3/5 of the verbs are 100% of 3/5 of the verbs.

It comes, then, to this: that not only can knowledge be absolute, but that there is no instance of knowledge in the history of thought which hasn’t been. I suppose it well to say again, that there has been no instance of knowledge which hasn’t been relative, too. A frog is the whole of that frog, but a portion of a pond. This is true, even while the frog is leaping.