CONCEPT
Propositional and Prescriptive Knowledge
Mokyr's career-defining distinction between <em>knowing that</em> (propositional) and <em>knowing how</em> (prescriptive) — and the empirical claim that the cost of converting one into the other is the primary variable explaining sustained economic growth.
Joel Mokyr's central theoretical contribution distinguishes two fundamentally different kinds of useful knowledge. Propositional knowledge is understanding that something is the case — heating iron ore with carbon at sufficient temperatures produces stronger metal, planets orbit the sun according to mathematical laws, specific bacteria cause specific diseases. Prescriptive knowledge is knowing how to do something about it — the specific sequence of temperatures, timing, tools, and techniques required to actually produce strong metal in a forge, to build an orrery, to culture a pathogen. The first is science. The second is craft. The distinction, adapted from Gilbert Ryle's 1949 philosophical work, acquires economic significance when Mokyr asks: what does it cost to convert one into the other?
In The You On AI Field Guide
The distinction was developed most fully in The Gifts of Athena (2002), where Mokyr argued that the economic history of the modern world lives in the distance between these two kinds of knowledge. Propositional knowledge can be codified,
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