Amongst technical discussions on platforms, systems and semantic webs (making my head spin) we slipped into the more general dangerous philosophical question of what is knowledge? This was sparked off by a discussion on the concept of the learning object as the smallest indivisible learning base. Is it the fact, the sentence, the paragraph, the chapter or the book?
The discussion of what is knowledge and how small the learning object can become turned into a lively discussion, probably since it was a nice break from the technology side of the project.
The main thrust of the argument (well more of a disagreement) was the disagreement with the proposition that all learning objects should (and therefore could) be broken up into more palatable parts. The idea was to include a 500-word (approximate) limit for each such part.
Some of us disagreed that such a thing was possible. That such a normative formal approach could be taken in relation to learning objects. Knowledge can be too complex to always be able to be broken down into a fixed limit.
We shared ideas and put forward metaphors, philosophers and concepts. But in the end we had to agree to disagree since neither side could convince the other. The argument could have continued but we broke up for coffee.
During coffee we were no longer on different sides of the table but on neutral ground – the discussions relaxed but we remained in fundamental disagreement on whether knowledge could or could not be subdivided – but we all agreed that it was a good argument. Once again the importance of the coffee break was proven.