Knowing How

Leila is ten, and she rides her bike everywhere. Her uncle Karim teaches physics at a university. He can explain exactly why a moving bike stays up: how the wheels turn, how the rider steers into a fall without noticing. Leila can't explain any of it. But Karim never learned to ride, and when he tries, he falls off at once. Which of them knows how to ride a bike?

Two kinds of knowing

Everyone would say Leila does. And yet Karim knows more facts about bikes than she ever will. So there must be two different things here.

• Knowing that is knowing a fact: knowing that Paris is in France, that water boils when it is hot enough, that a moving bike stays up because of how it is steered. You can say it in a sentence, and it can be true or false.
• Knowing how is knowing how to do something: how to ride a bike, swim, tie a shoelace, whistle, speak your first language. You show it by doing it, and often you can't put it into words at all.

The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle made this difference famous in a book he wrote in 1949. He pointed out that most of what we know in a day is knowing how - walking, talking, reading a face - and that we would be stuck if we had to think of a fact before every step.

You can't learn it only from a book

Try to learn to swim from a book alone. You can read every page and still sink the first time you get into the water. Knowing how grows by practice: doing it, getting it a bit wrong, doing it again. That's why a piano teacher says "play it again" more than "listen to this fact".

It works the other way too. Leila can't learn that the Earth goes round the Sun by riding her bike more. Each kind of knowing has its own way in.

Do the three legs still work?

The three-legged stool from Knowledge Level 1 - believe it, it is true, good reasons - was made for knowing that. It fits facts. It doesn't fit Leila very well. What does Leila "believe" when she rides? What is her "good reason"? It sounds strange to ask.

Philosophers still argue about whether knowing how is secretly a kind of knowing that, or something else. This course doesn't need to decide. What matters is to notice the difference: when someone says "I know", ask which kind they mean. "I know how to fix it" is tested by fixing it. "I know that it's fixed" is tested by checking.

Try it at home

1. Write down three things you know how to do but couldn't explain well (whistling, catching a ball, finding your way home).
2. Write down three things you know that, but couldn't do (how a plane flies, how a heart works).
3. Teach someone to do one thing you know how to do, without showing them - only with words. How far do you get?

Words to know

• knowing that - knowing a fact, which you can say in a sentence
• knowing how - knowing how to do something, which you show by doing it
• practice - doing something again and again, which is how knowing how grows

Big idea

There are two kinds of knowing. Knowing that is about facts and can be said; knowing how is about doing and is shown. A great swimmer and a great swimming scientist know different things.