The Piano Handbook by Carl Humphries is a great book for amateur piano lovers. It consists of an introduction and 18 units arranged from easy to difficult. However, is it possible to learn to play the piano by reading The Piano Manual, a systematically organized series of facts (from easy to difficult), without ever touching a real piano? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay When studying the greatest pianists in history, from Chopin to Rubinstein, it is clear that they gained their knowledge through practice. It would therefore be rather absurd to say that one can learn how to play the piano by reading a book. In this case, playing the piano represents a special type of knowledge called tacit knowledge or know-how. It is a type of knowledge that philosopher Michael Polanyi notes as “More can be known than can be said” (Polanyi, 8). Since facts are things that cannot travel without being symbolically encoded, knowledge such as riding a bicycle, driving a car, or swimming cannot be represented by a system of facts (Howlett and Morgan, 1). A similar argument can also be constructed for knowledge by acquaintance; therefore it is evident that the given statement does not capture the entire reality of knowledge but only propositional knowledge, transferable through language. In this essay I will discuss why the given statement should be rectified as follows: “A posteriori propositional knowledge is the synthesis of the systemic organization of facts.” Even though terms like “facts,” “systematic organization,” and “nothing but” are used loosely in the introductory paragraph, for a deeper understanding of the given statement, such terms should be clearly defined. Mainly it should be recognized that the statement given is a definition of knowledge, so a competing definition will not be used; rather I will explore the lexical and stipulative implications of using this definition. In the theory of definitions, the lexical definition is the one that reports how a term is already used in a linguistic community. On the other hand, a stipulative definition freely assigns meaning to a term. According to this theory, a definition should include both lexical and stipulative elements; while it should correspond to reality, it should also have a stipulative component to reduce any vagueness in the definition. For the other terms there are numerous definitions; however, we must choose one, as it is not possible to explore the consequences of using each different definition within the scope of this essay. David Hume in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding defines a fact as a correspondence to reality gained from experience (Mulligan, Kevin and Correia, Fabrice, "Facts"). For example, the proposition that "the cat is in the hat" is considered factual if and only if the statement corresponds to reality, that is, if the cat is indeed in the hat. This approach assumes that sensual perception is the only way of knowing. But can't knowledge be acquired with reason, emotion or intuition? Another important part is "nothing more than", this part represents a reductionist argument that knowledge can be reduced to facts; however there can be a synergistic effect of facts, as Kurt Koffka once said: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" (Dewey, "The whole is different from the sum of its parts"). Finally, systematic organization represents ordering according to a formal procedure. Hume's definition of facts implies that propositional knowledge must be a posteriori, acquiredthrough experience. However, this approach poses a problem in the field of mathematics since mathematical knowledge is considered a priori, independent of experience. Consider the following proposition "2+2=4": it is not a Humean fact (Hume would define it as a relation of ideas) because it does not correspond to an experience, since numbers are abstract concepts. According to the given definition, we should reject mathematics as an area of ​​knowledge since it is not empirical. This poses a lexical problem since mathematics is considered an area of ​​knowledge in the real world. In fact, people claim to know mathematical concepts. On the other hand, it can be said that mathematics is a posteriori; to include mathematics in the given definition of knowledge. Supporters of this approach might argue that every mathematical concept corresponds to an experience. For example, the abstract idea of ​​"2+2=4" corresponds to the experience that "two apples and two oranges make four fruits." This view that mathematics is a posteriori becomes more plausible when we think about how young children learn arithmetic. They initially learn through visualization how to add two apples and two oranges to get four fruits. However, we know that some mathematical ideas have no correspondence with real life. Pure mathematics is an ideal example of this phenomenon since there is no experience that can correspond to the concepts of pure mathematics. Even in the field of applied mathematics, most ideas were discovered before being applied to the real world. Complex numbers were invented in the 16th century. They were studied diligently by mathematicians such as Descartes, Euler and Gauss only as a mental effort. Only in the 19th century did complex numbers begin to be used in electrical engineering; for 300 years they were just an abstract idea (Merino, A Short History of Complex Numbers). Therefore, it is logical to conclude that the construction of mathematical knowledge is independent of experience; so it's a posteriori. One can resolve this lexical contradiction by modifying the given statement as follows: "A posteriori propositional knowledge is nothing other than the systematic organization of facts." Since all knowledge is not empirical, the given statement should be refined to include only a posteriori knowledge. In contrast to mathematics, in the natural sciences evidence is assumed to be purely factual. However, a systematic organization is not sufficient for the formation of scientific knowledge; we need a summary of the facts. A simple physics experiment testifies that knowledge is more than a systematic organization of facts. We recently conducted an experiment to determine the gravitational acceleration in Istanbul. We recorded a ball falling against a ruler. The ruler is used to determine the displacement and the camera for the time taken. Ultimately, there were two sets of data; time and displacement. They are called raw data and correspond to the idea of ​​facts. We organized the data into a systematic organization: the independent variable, time, was plotted on the horizontal axis and the dependent variable, displacement, on the vertical axis of a graph. If the given definition were correct, the experiment would be terminated; however, in reality, the acceleration was not evident from the initial graph. To find the acceleration, we drew the best-fit line and several tangents to it and obtained a new set of processed data, which were no longer a set of facts as they were not acquired directly from experience. This new table was synthesized by reason. While the first step involved the systematic organization of sensory inputs (facts), the other steps did not require any perception.