Knowns and Unknowns

Developed by Dionysios Maroulis

Introduction

This article argues about the categorization of Known and Unknowns. The categorization had been used since the Greek era and in many different areas of knowledge. The frameworks that will be described in this article are powerful tools to surface what we know and do not know about a problem. The first framework that will be introduced and explained is the: Knowns and Unknowns, and the second one is the: The Johari window technique.

One of the most recent and well known references about this topic was from Donald Henry Rumsfeld. In response to a query about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said these statements at a press conference in 2002.Even though he did not come up with the concept, it became his most famous line. "Known and Unknown" is the title of his book, and director Errol Morris made a documentary about him called "Unknown Known." . Rumsfeld stated:

" Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones "

. Some could say that Socrates was referring to this knowledge when he first said I only know that I do not know anything. However, Ibn Yami, in the thirteenth century was the first that used these methods to categorize humas beings accordingly to their knowledge .:

One who knows and knows that he knows… his horse of wisdom will reach the skies.One who knows, but doesn’t know that he knows… he is fast asleep, so you should wake him up!One who doesn’t know, but knows that he doesn’t know… his limping mule will eventually get him home.One who doesn’t know and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know… he will be eternally lost in his hopeless oblivion!"

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Knowns and Unknowns table

The Johari window

Annotated bibliography

References