by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: November 01, 2009   Last Updated: November 02, 2009

Knowledge is power only as a coefficient to the environment and circumstance. If dropped into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in a Houdini dive casket on a dark and stormy winter solstice night the knowledge one has wouldn't be exactly powerful. This is an example of 'the fallacy of power for telekinesis applications'.

Knowledge of how to deliver a joke properly is comedic power. Political power is an oxymoron acme of the anti-knowledge dark side of the force. Ignorant politicians are often the most powerful. Paul Von Hindenberg, Chancellor of the Wiemar Republic, bragged that he had never read a book. Yoda knew that intelligence lay in changing positions of subjects and predicates in sentences. If power has metaphorical power, if it is oil slicks on the pristine bays of wilderness areas, or if power is like a simile or an analogy of how things can be politically accomplished, it is better than knowledge as physical power. Brain power in watts must be less that two or three. If brain power were tapped to make an electric outboard motor engine go forward it would probably require at least a millions brains with serial circuit connections through super-conducting wires to reduce power leaking to get a half a horse power. Knowledge is not power exactly, yet it can rightly switch power flows with conscious purpose. Frequently mind plan knowledge power applied increases entropy in releasing power. We are reminded of nuclear bombs.

If one is well educated and knows a lot about science, but is a liberal arts major in a poor country without scientists perhaps the president might make you his Minister of Science and a hacienda with a thousand servant-employees. Its fine until the clown car of real scientists arrive to move you out of the sinecure. This is an example of 'the fallacy of comparative knowledge as power in the absence of rivals."

Knowledge has a comparative social value that is valuable and powerful if the knowledge is regarded as true and exclusively possessed by an individual. Scientists recently discovered that chimpanzees with exclusive, useful knowledge such as how to open a container with food (after being trained by scientists) received more grooming by other chimps after sharing the secret. A weak, female chimp with mange given special knowledge received as much grooming as powerful alpha male chimps by the group of chimps. Knowledge is power, yet the diffusion of knowledge reduces power for the formerly exclusive possessor of knowledge. The power

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