is there a fine line between knowing and understanding?

Question

there are some that they know so much but understand so little.
dont you think understanding you can get a good grasp of everything in subject and goes in diffrent time. but knowing is just being informaitve. do u understand

Answer 1

To know and understand are both different and the same. One can see but not know what they are seeing. One can know but not understand. One can seem to understand without knowing. OK I'm confused.....

Answer 2

There was a training i attended once. The lecturer stressed that knowing and understanding belong to the same family yet they differ in level. As most of the answers here indicate, understanding is in a deeper level than merely knowing. For example, you might know a piece of fact if you have read it in a book. Thus you can repeat that information when it's fresh in your memory. But if you understood what you read, you will be able to reconstruct and impart the information using your own words, and you could even gain new insights which were not part of the original data. Thus, understanding has the ability to give birth to new ideas, as it allows a person to ingest ideas, color them with his/her own experiences, and spit out a modified or a new set of ideas.

Answer 3

Ancient Chinese proverb: To hear is to forget, to see is to know, to do is to understand. I'm pretty much in agreement, understanding is knowledge proven through one's actions, while knowledge is simply factoids one can spout at will. Put another way, if you can do something, you understand it, but if you can simply say how it should be done, you just know it. A doctor who treats patients (successfully) actually understands anatomy (more or less), while a biologist who learns about it in classrooms may know anatomy but not actually understand it.

This defination probably makes it tough of impossible to understand truly abstract concepts, like God or the nature of Time, but maybe rightly so.

Answer 4

I understand but I might not know. Knowledge is a super-set of understanding attained through work and experience.

Answer 5

Your talking the difference between book smarts and good sense. There are plenty of doctors and lawyers out there with book smarts but few with good sense also.

Answer 6

Yes, I understand--the line between knowing something, and truly understanding it is thick indeed.

Answer 7

No the line is quite thick, for something to be understood it must first be known, thoroughly; however, to be known one must simply perceive it.

Answer 8

I think people who claim to "know" too much are closed minded and therefore have limited knowledge.

Answer 9

they are two different things that reqire one another. like, you can hear, but not listen, but listen without hearing (unless your listening for something but not hearing it :/), it's the way, and how much, you comprehend it

Answer 10

ya!the most important thing is to know and then you understand it.

it is imposible to understand if you don't know...