The Helix of Human Cognition: Knowledge Management According to DIKW, E2E, and the Proposed View

Abstract

This is a theoretical paper; it presents the author's position about how to improve on the commonly disparate thinking about information, data, knowledge, concepts, and wisdom by viewing them pragmatically through the lens of decision making as factors in operations. It refers to the traditional Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) Hierarchy, considered by some as the canon of information science and knowledge management and the Existence to Enlightenment (E2E) model. Both have been critically reviewed and their weaknesses exposed. Scholars' views attest to how divorced they may become from practice and academic postulates worthy of attention. Information, when viewed as a symbolic pattern of physical states that represents a factor for operations or for extension of replicable knowledge, offers a platform and framework for verifiable reasoning and testing of hypotheses with improved transparency, which is the main objective of this paper. It emphasizes the natural semantics of pragmatic consequences of informing in contrast to linguistic semantics emphasized by most academicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]