ЗНАНИЕ
Knowledge
A product of the social labour and thinking of men, an ideal reproduction, in language form of objective, law-governed relations in the objective world that undergoes changes. The essence of knowledge cannot be understood without revealing the social nature of man's practical activity. Man's social power is concentrated and crystallised in knowledge.
In the history of philosophy, this furnished the basis for the ideas of objective idealist systems about the self-sufficient and self-determining significance of ideal products of man's social activity (Plato, Hegel). In the epistemology of pre-Marxist materialism knowledge was understood, contrariwise, as a product of the individual cognitive effort, of individual experience. But such a view, upholding the sensualistic principle, could not explain the fact that man begins the process of cognition possessing a "ready-made" apparatus of concepts and categories elaborated by society.
It is a direct function of knowledge to convert scattered concept into a universal form, retaining in them that which may be passed on to others as a stable basis for practical action. From this angle knowledge is contrasted to opinion, the vulgar notions expressing empirical, changeable properties of things.
Знание
Знание («Знание»,) издательство Всесоюзного общества «Знание». Основано в 1951 в Москве. Выпускает научно-популярную литературу по различным отраслям знания - подписные серии «Новое в жизни, науке, технике» (24 серии), «Народный университет»
(7 факультетов), серию методических указаний и разработок лекций «В помощь лектору», массовую серию «Прочти, товарищ», международные научно-популярные ежегодники «Наука и человечество» (с 1962), «Будущее науки»
(с 1967) и др. В 1971 издательством было выпущено 633 книги и брошюры тиражом 30 млн. 215 тыс. экз.