Conceptual Knowledge Vs Procedural Knowledge

As human beings, it is inevitable that we find ourselves questioning the true purpose of acquiring knowledge and retaining it. At a young age, society demands for us to be educated and knowledgeable. Hence at age five or six, we are enrolled to kindergarten where we are first exposed to a safe, learning environment. The process then carries on until we eventually venture off to higher academic pursuits. This, however, requires instinctively mastering different areas of knowledge to a certain degree, for it functions as a prerequisite to a more advanced learning. “Without application in the world, the value of knowledge is greatly diminished” is a controversial statement, which when pondered upon, implies a direct correlation between the application

For these two fields especially, the coined terms “conceptual knowledge” and “procedural knowledge” are of utmost importance. Though often indistinguishable, conceptual knowledge is defined as the knowledge of generic ideas generalized from particular instances and are not usually tied to solvable problem types. It could either be implicit or explicit, as per situation, therefore needing not to be verbalized. On the other hand, procedural knowledge is defined as the knowledge of steps required to obtain various goals. It is a predetermined sequence of actions that will lead to the correct answer when executed correctly, or possible actions that must be sequenced appropriately to solve a given

According to Hans Weiler, one of the conventional assumptions that differentiate them apart is that they require different areas of knowledge. Theoretical knowledge is broad and generic, conceptual and nomothetic. Practical knowledge, on the other hand, is singular and situational. In correlation to that, the works of Karl-Otto Apel, Paul Roth and others have triggered a controversy wherein traditional scientific models and/or theories are deemed to be critically limited when it comes to social realism. It, of course, does not directly go to say that they are completely irrelevant, but rather that there is a demand for an even more all-encompassing concept of understanding alongside these particular happenings in a social scenario. Ultimately, this could be achieved through more practicalities. To quote Peter Winch several decades ago: “The central concepts which belong to our understanding of social life are incompatible with concepts central to the activity of scientific prediction. When we speak of the possibility of scientific prediction of social developments, we literally do not understand what we are saying.” In layman's term, the gap between scientific ideology and social relativity are far too huge to encourage actual understanding of its uses, which ideally does not diminish the value of knowledge itself, but rather the ability to retain