If you ask people, they will say they know the meanings of the terms ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Understanding’. But in a survey, a higher percentage of people didn’t ideally know what the words mean.
To avoid those assumptions, I will explain to you the difference between Knowledge and Understanding.
In general terms, the word ‘Knowledge’ means awareness about a particular fact or situation, while the word ‘Understanding’ means knowing the reason or cause of the problem. Although knowledge may be fixed, understanding is easily flexible as it depends on an individual’s perception of the matter.
Before talking about the difference of Knowledge Vs Understanding, let’s look at them individually.
· Meaning of Knowledge
Knowledge is defined as the awareness of a particular fact or situation. It involves what you understand and what you don’t understand. Knowledge usually covers a big portion of information than understanding, as not all the knowledge that we have is understood.
Knowledge consists of facts that are often indisputable, which means you can’t say that particular knowledge is wrong. For example, the sun rises and sets. This is a fact that I know and several other people also know and I can say it without any thought. So this fact refers to the knowledge that I possess and it doesn’t matter that I understand this concept or not.
These facts that we are aware of and can barely argue are said to be the individual’s knowledge.
· Meaning of Understanding
Understanding is defined as being aware of the reason or cause of a situation. Understanding is limited to the knowledge that we possess and capture. People are aware of many things (knowledge) but we will understand that in various ways as we all have different thought processes.
For example, Mr. A may have a different perception of the electromagnetic waves while Mr. B may have a different perception. So, people understand things differently or people may have a different understanding of certain topics as they have different perceptions.
Overall, knowledge is mere facts while understanding is based on an individual’s perception and hence varies.
Difference between Knowledge and Understanding
- The first difference lies in the definition of the two concepts.
- Knowledge is vast when compared to understanding.
- Knowledge is not a proper ability of a student while understanding is the proper ability that every student should possess if he wants to do something with his knowledge.
- Knowledge is usually facts and is indisputable while understanding may vary from individual to individual.
I hope this article was helpful and you have got the difference between the two terms Knowledge Vs Understanding.