Leila and the bike

About this video

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?

Everyone would say Leila. Yet Karim knows more facts about bikes than she ever will. So there are two different kinds of knowing. Knowing that is knowing a fact: that Paris is in France, that water boils when it is hot enough. You can say it in a sentence, and it can be true or false. Knowing how is knowing how to do something: ride a bike, swim, tie a shoelace, whistle. You show it by doing it, and often you can't put it into words at all. The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle made the difference famous in 1949.

Each kind has its own way in. You can read every page of a book about swimming and still sink the first time you get into the water: knowing how grows by practice, by doing it, getting it a bit wrong and doing it again. And riding more won't teach Leila that the Earth goes round the Sun.

So 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. This video goes with the Knowing How lesson of Knowledge Level 2 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00Leila is ten, and she rides her bike everywhere.
2. 0:05Uncle Karim can explain why a bike stays up. He falls off at once.
3. 0:11Knowing that is a fact, said in a sentence. Knowing how is shown by doing.
4. 0:17Read every page on swimming, and you still sink. Knowing how grows by practice.
5. 0:23I know how to fix it, fix it. I know that it's fixed, check it.
6. 0:29Two kinds of knowing, each with its own way in.