The knowledge pyramid: a critique of the DIKW hierarchy

The paper evaluates the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) Hierarchy. This hierarchy is part of the canon of information science and management. The paper considers whether the hierarchy, also known as the ‘Knowledge Hierarchy’, is a useful and intellectually desirable construct to introduce, whether the views expressed about DIKW are true and have evidence in favour of them, and whether there are good reasons offered or sound assumptions made about DIKW. Arguments are offered that the hierarchy is unsound and methodologically undesirable. The paper identifies a central logical error that DIKW makes. The paper identifies the dated and unsatisfactory philosophical positions of operationalism and inductivism as the philosophical backdrop to the hierarchy. The paper concludes with a sketch of some positive theories, of value to information science, on the nature of the components of the hierarchy: that data is anything recordable in a semantically and pragmatically sound way, that information is what is known in other literature as ‘weak knowledge’, that knowledge also is ‘weak knowledge’ and that wisdom is the possession and use, if required, of wide practical knowledge, by an agent who appreciates the fallible nature of that knowledge.