• Steps to an Ecology of Bitcoin
  • The Phenomenology of Mis-Understanding
• The Foundational Distinction
• Part I: The Wine Tasting Example
  • The Setup
  • The Irreducible Gap
• Part II: The Bitcoin Application
  • Knowledge OF Bitcoin
  • Knowledge BY Bitcoin
  • The Orange Pill as Knowledge BY
• Part III: Luria’s Peasants (fn.0.b1)
  • The Soviet Literacy Campaign
  • The Syllogism Test
  • What This Reveals
  • The Havelock Connection
  • The Bitcoin Parallel
• Part IV: The Huxley-Russell Framework
  • Russell’s Original Distinction
  • Huxley’s Extension
  • The Being Transformation
• Part V: The Pedagogical Implications
  • Why Telling Doesn’t Work
  • The Role of the Teacher
  • The Conditions for Transformation
• Part VI: Integration with Other Frameworks
  • The Richmond Mapping
  • The Glasersfeld Mapping
  • The Von Foerster Mapping
  • The Ackoff Mapping
• Part VII: The Complete Framework
  • The Four-Thinker Synthesis
  • What Each Contributes
• Part VIII: The Idolatry Warning
  • Huxley’s Three Idolatries
  • Technological Idolatry Applied
  • The Experiential Imperative
• Part IX: Practical Applications
  • For Bitcoin Educators
  • For Bitcoin Learners
  • For Understanding the Resistance
• Summary: The Huxley Contribution
  • The Distinction
  • The Application
  • The Integration
  • The Imperative
• Navigation
• Cross-References

id: fn.0.b 
title: "Huxley's Knowledge OF vs BY" 
parent: fn.0 
extends: step.01, fn.0.b1
connects: fn.0.a, fn.0.c, fn.0.f 
status: complete 
contains: fn.0.b1 
source: "Aldous Huxley via Bertrand Russell's distinction"

§fn.0.b — “Knowledge OF vs BY”

§Steps to an Ecology of Bitcoin

§The Phenomenology of Mis-Understanding

If you are not a philosophy geek then you might have missed the irony in the title. It is so easy to dismiss phiosophy since you can get stuck in intellectual weeds over just the meaning of a single word. Often any philosophy discussion needs up like a dog chasing its own tail.

This article is not about arguing who is right or what is true - I am just laying out a story - a battle between ideas. That may help understand why Bitcoin and novelty in general is a difficult thing the know and understand.

There is a branch of philosophy called epistemology - a fancy way to ask “How do we really know stuff?” It’s like being a detective for knowledge. You ask things like:

• How do I know this is true and not just something I made up or someone told me?

• Can I trust my eyes, my ears, or what my teacher says?

• What makes some ways of finding out things (like doing experiments or looking closely) better than others (like just guessing or believing something because it feels good)?

In summary, it’s the study of figuring out the best ways to learn what’s actually real and true, and why some ways work better than others for knowing things for sure.

And here is the problem because what is true for me is not true for you? So we need a set of rules to agree on what will determine truth.

This is the “rules” problem. Where the battle ground lies. It’s a very old problem and we could stop here and have a debate on how far back to go. For this article it will start In the early century 1900’s, The 2 big ideas about how we “know about stuff” came from two extreme positions:

1. There is an external world independent of the mind (i.e. scientific materialism and analytic philosophy)

2. There is only a lived experience of the internal world (ie. Neo-Kantianism and Idealism)

Important to note, the divide isn’t always sharp—some thinkers mix them—but they highlight ongoing fights over how to “do” philosophy: precise and science-friendly vs. broad and human-centered.

The hero in this store is Betrand Russell, who sought to resolve paradoxes in logic and epistemology, such as how we can meaningfully discuss or know about things we haven’t directly experienced, like physical objects or other minds.

To understand Russell’s position, the only way to really know things for sure is to start with stuff you experience directly — like the colors you see, the sounds you hear, or the feelings you have right now. Those direct experiences are rock-solid; you can’t doubt them.

From that solid base, we build up everything else we know — like believing there’s a table in the room even when your eyes are closed, or knowing about far-away places and people we’ve never met. We figure those out by describing them and connecting the dots from our direct experiences.

This step-by-step building from super-certain direct stuff helps us answer the doubters who say: ‘How can you be sure the outside world even exists?’ Because everything traces back to those undeniable personal experiences.“

The distinction: Knowlege BY vs Knowledge OF, was part of Russell’s broader project to ground knowledge on secure, indubitable foundations (logical atomism and sense-data theory). It was direct counter responding to idealism (e.g., from Kant and Hegel) and empiricist skepticism (e.g., from Hume).

Also important to acknowledge, that many Bitcoin philosopher’s, refer to the concept of a priori knowledge — from Immanuel Kant. Interestly, Russell’s ideas are part of the long conversation Kant started about what we can know with or without experience. Russell leans toward experience being the main source (like empiricists), while Kant insisted reason gives us deep truths on its own.

Russell’s ideas of Knowledge OF and Knowledge BY, evolved into his master piece with co-author Alfrfed Whitehead: Principia Mathematica. Finally, the world had a foundation of certainity and logic and reason in math that is determined to be true by math itself.

So what happenned? Within 14 years, a young student from Austria showed that Russells goal —to create a complete, self-contained system for all math based on logic—was shown to be impossible.

In 1931, young Gödel proved that in any logical system strong enough to handle basic arithmetic (like the one in Principia Mathematica), there will always be true statements that can’t be proven within the system itself, and you can’t prove the system is free of contradictions using its own rules.

Logic didn’t die but Postivism and Foundationalism lost its high groound - and the rise of Post-Modern idealism and gathered new life.

This where this article starts - Huxley picks up on Russle’s attempt to define logic based on subjective experience an inverts the notions.

“Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing.” — Aldous Huxley

“There is all the difference in the world between believing a thing and knowing it from experience.” — Aldous Huxley

UPDATE: 2025-12-28 This field note is linked out into 3 more sub-branches - this reflects the depth of this topic and you can decide how deep you want to go into the Huxley paradigm. This field note connects the more extensive Huxley Framework on the dance between Knowledge and Understanding \[fn.0.b1\]

§The Foundational Distinction

Aldous Huxley, drawing on Bertrand Russell’s epistemological work and flipping it around, articulated a distinction that cuts to the heart of why Bitcoin understanding cannot be transmitted:

Knowledge OF (Knowledge by Description):

• Knowledge about something

• Can be communicated through language

• Exists as propositions, facts, descriptions

• Transmitted from one mind to another

• The kind of knowledge found in textbooks

Knowledge BY (Knowledge by Acquaintance):

• Knowledge through direct experience

• Cannot be communicated—only pointed toward

• Exists as lived understanding

• Must be awakened, not transferred

• The kind of knowledge found in mastery
  
  It may be important to note that Huxley comes up with these ideas experiementing with LSD and halluciegencs.

§Part I: The Wine Tasting Example

§The Setup

Imagine trying to teach someone about wine who has never tasted wine.

Knowledge OF wine:

• “This Bordeaux has notes of blackcurrant, cedar, and tobacco”

• “Tannins create astringency on the palate”

• “Acidity provides structure and freshness”

• “The finish lingers for 30 seconds”

All of this can be communicated. Written in books. Memorized. Tested.

Knowledge BY wine:

Impossible to communicate.

The person must taste the wine and continue to taste and contrast each experience.

There must be an experience, a total sensory experience that evokes the sensation of tannin on tongue. There must be sensation of how acidity brightens the wine tasting and this experience is also experienced by others . This is the domain were the wine taster notices how flavors evolve across the palate and into the finish. AND SO ON… etc.

No amount of lectures, podcasts, articles, books descriptions can substitute for the first sip.

§The Irreducible Gap

“A person who has never tasted wine can never understand what the word ‘wine’ means to one who has.”

This is not a failure of vocabulary. It’s not that we need better words. The gap is ontological—it exists in the nature of what knowledge BY is.

Knowledge BY requires a change in the knower. The person who has tasted wine is different from the person who has not. They have new receptors activated, new patterns recognized, new categories constructed.

Knowledge OF changes what you have. Knowledge BY changes what you are.

§Part II: The Bitcoin Application

§Knowledge OF Bitcoin

What can be communicated:

• “Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins”

• “Blocks are mined approximately every 10 minutes”

• “The difficulty adjustment occurs every 2016 blocks”

• “Private keys control access to funds”

• “Proof of work secures the network through energy expenditure”

All of this fits in textbooks. Can be memorized. Can be tested. Can be recited.

This is what Bitcoin education typically provides.

§Knowledge BY Bitcoin

What cannot be communicated:

• The visceral understanding of self-custody that comes from holding your own keys

• The time preference shift that comes from holding through a full cycle

• The sovereignty feeling that comes from running your own node

• The finality understanding that comes from losing funds to a bad transaction

• The network intuition that comes from watching consensus emerge in real-time

None of this can be transmitted. It can only be lived.

§The Orange Pill as Knowledge BY

The “orange pill” is not an information transfer. It’s not convincing someone that propositions about Bitcoin are true.

The orange pill is the moment when knowledge OF becomes knowledge BY—when description gives way to acquaintance, when propositions become experience.

You cannot orange-pill someone through explanation.

You can only create conditions for the experience that transforms them.

§Part III: Luria’s Peasants (fn.0.b1)

§The Soviet Literacy Campaign

Alexander Luria, working in the 1930s Soviet Union, studied illiterate peasants in Central Asia during the literacy campaigns. His findings illuminate the OF/BY distinction at a civilizational scale.

§The Syllogism Test

Luria presented syllogisms:

“In the Far North, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North and there is always snow there. What color are the bears there?”

Literate response: “White.” (Apply the rule.)

Illiterate peasant response: “I don’t know. I’ve never been there.”

§What This Reveals

The peasants weren’t stupid. They were operating from knowledge BY—they only knew what they had experienced directly.

The syllogism asks you to manipulate propositions about things you’ve never encountered. This is knowledge OF—pure description, abstracted from experience.

Literacy creates the capacity for knowledge OF that is separate from knowledge BY.

§The Havelock Connection

Eric Havelock’s work on the Greek literate revolution makes the same point:

Oral culture: Knowledge is embodied. You know what you’ve experienced. The bard doesn’t recite facts—he performs, and the audience participates.

Literate culture: Knowledge is abstracted. You can know propositions about things you’ve never encountered. Text enables knowledge OF divorced from knowledge BY.

§The Bitcoin Parallel

Most Bitcoin education operates in literate mode—transmitting propositions about a system the learner has never experienced.

“Bitcoin has 21 million supply cap” is a syllogism for someone who has never:

• Run a node to verify the supply

• Held through a halving

• Felt the scarcity through market cycles

They’re being asked to reason about something they don’t know BY acquaintance.

This is why Bitcoin education fails. It’s trying to transmit knowledge OF without creating the conditions for knowledge BY.

§Part IV: The Huxley-Russell Framework

§Russell’s Original Distinction

Bertrand Russell distinguished:

Knowledge by Acquaintance: Direct awareness of something. I am acquainted with my sensations, my thoughts, my memories. This knowledge is immediate—no inference required.

Knowledge by Description: Knowledge of something as “the thing that has such-and-such properties.” This is mediated—it goes through propositions.

I have knowledge BY acquaintance of the pain in my tooth. You have knowledge OF my toothache by description (“the pain Russell reports”).

§Huxley’s Extension

Huxley extended this to understanding itself:

“Knowledge is a function of being.”

The kind of knowledge available to you depends on what kind of being you are. Change your being, change your possible knowledge.

An infant cannot understand calculus—not because calculus is too complex, but because the infant’s being hasn’t developed the structures for that understanding.

A pre-coiner cannot understand Bitcoin sovereignty—not because it’s too complex, but because they haven’t developed the experiential structures.

§The Being Transformation

Knowledge OF: Adds to what you have (information, propositions).

Knowledge BY: Transforms what you are (being, structure, capacity).

This is why knowledge BY doesn’t leak (Richmond’s insight). It’s not information that can be forgotten. It’s structural transformation that persists.

Once you’ve tasted wine, you cannot un-taste it. Once you’ve held your own keys, you cannot un-know that feeling.

§Part V: The Pedagogical Implications

§Why Telling Doesn’t Work

Huxley was explicit:

“Understanding comes when there is a union between the knower and the known.”

You cannot create union through description. Description keeps knower and known separate—that’s what description IS.

Understanding requires participation. The knower must enter into relation with the known.

Bitcoin education that stays at the level of description can never produce understanding.

§The Role of the Teacher

If understanding cannot be transmitted, what can a teacher do?

Huxley’s answer: The teacher can point.

“The teacher can only point the way, give hints, suggest methods.”

Like a finger pointing at the moon—the finger is not the moon, but it can direct attention.

The Bitcoin educator’s job is not to transmit Bitcoin understanding. It’s to create conditions and point toward experiences that may awaken understanding.

§The Conditions for Transformation

What enables the shift from OF to BY?

1. Engagement: The learner must interact with the thing itself, not just descriptions

2. Perturbation: Something must violate expectations (Glasersfeld’s rattle-spoon)

3. Time: Transformation takes time; understanding can’t be rushed

4. Repetition: Multiple encounters, different angles, accumulating acquaintance

5. Community: Others who have the knowledge BY can model and support

§Part VI: Integration with Other Frameworks

§The Richmond Mapping

Richmond’s processes 1-2 deal with knowledge OF—content assimilation, gaining understanding from others. These leak because they’re deposits, not transformations.

Richmond’s processes 3-5 deal with knowledge BY—building understanding through construction. These don’t leak because they transform being.

Richmond operationalizes what Huxley describes phenomenologically.

§The Glasersfeld Mapping

Glasersfeld’s scheme theory provides the mechanism:

• Knowledge OF is assimilation to existing schemes

• Knowledge BY is accommodation creating new schemes

Glasersfeld explains HOW the transformation from OF to BY happens.

§The Von Foerster Mapping

Von Foerster’s truth/trust distinction parallels OF/BY:

• Veritas is knowledge OF—propositions that can be checked

• Trust is knowledge BY—relations that are lived

Von Foerster shows how OF and BY create different social relations.

§The Ackoff Mapping

Ackoff’s knowledge/understanding distinction:

• Analysis produces knowledge (OF)—how parts work

• Synthesis produces understanding (BY)—why the whole matters

Ackoff historicizes the OF/BY distinction as a civilizational transition.

§Part VII: The Complete Framework

§The Four-Thinker Synthesis

§What Each Contributes

Huxley: The phenomenological distinction—what it FEELS LIKE to know OF vs BY.

Richmond: The operational framework—what PROCESSES produce each type.

Ackoff: The historical context—WHEN the emphasis on OF emerged (Machine Age).

Glasersfeld: The mechanism—HOW the transition from OF to BY occurs (scheme theory).

Together: A complete theory of why Bitcoin understanding cannot be transmitted and what conditions enable its construction.

§Part VIII: The Idolatry Warning

§Huxley’s Three Idolatries

In “Huxley and God,” Aldous identified three modern idolatries:

1. Technological Idolatry: The belief that machines can perfect humanity

2. Political Idolatry: The belief that the right system can perfect society

3. Moral Idolatry: The belief that the right rules can perfect behavior

§Technological Idolatry Applied

“The assertion of the technological idolater is the belief that machines will be so perfect that human beings will be perfect.”

This is the error of “Bitcoin fixes this.”

The idolatry assumes that the technology (knowledge OF Bitcoin’s properties) can substitute for transformation (knowledge BY participation).

But Bitcoin doesn’t fix anything by itself. Humans, transformed through participation with Bitcoin, may create different outcomes.

The technology provides conditions. The transformation requires knowledge BY.

§The Experiential Imperative

Huxley’s warning: Don’t worship the finger, experience the moon.

Bitcoin’s properties are fingers pointing. The understanding is in the participation.

Knowledge OF Bitcoin’s fixed supply means nothing until you’ve FELT what scarcity does to your time preference through holding.

Knowledge OF Bitcoin’s self-custody means nothing until you’ve EXPERIENCED what responsibility feels like through controlling your keys.

The idolatry is thinking that knowledge OF substitutes for knowledge BY.

§Part IX: Practical Applications

§For Bitcoin Educators

1. Minimize lecture, maximize participation. You can’t transmit understanding, but you can create conditions for experience.

2. Design perturbations. What experiences will violate the learner’s existing schemes and create accommodation?

3. Point, don’t push. Your job is to direct attention toward experiences, not to force conclusions.

4. Honor the time. Transformation cannot be rushed. Understanding emerges on its own schedule.

5. Model, don’t preach. Demonstrate what knowledge BY looks like, rather than describing what it should be.

§For Bitcoin Learners

1. Stop reading, start doing. At some point, more knowledge OF becomes counterproductive.

2. Seek perturbation. Put yourself in situations where your existing schemes will be challenged.

3. Trust the process. Understanding will come, but not on your schedule.

4. Find community. Others with knowledge BY can support your transformation.

5. Be patient with yourself. The gap between OF and BY is real. It takes what it takes.

§For Understanding the Resistance

When someone rejects Bitcoin despite hearing all the arguments, they’re not stupid. They lack knowledge BY.

All the knowledge OF in the world—all the propositions, all the statistics, all the reasoning—cannot substitute for the experiential transformation.

They don’t need more arguments. They need conditions for experience.

§Summary: The Huxley Contribution

§The Distinction

Knowledge OF: About the thing. Communicated. Propositions. Can be transmitted.

Knowledge BY: Through experience. Lived. Acquaintance. Must be awakened.

§The Application

Bitcoin education operates almost entirely in knowledge OF. This is why it fails.

The orange pill is the transition from OF to BY. This is why it transforms.

§The Integration

• Richmond operationalizes the distinction (5 processes)

• Ackoff historicizes it (Machine Age vs Systems Age)

• Glasersfeld mechanizes it (scheme theory)

• Von Foerster socializes it (trust vs verify)

• Huxley gives us the phenomenology—what it FEELS like

§The Imperative

“There is all the difference in the world between believing a thing and knowing it from experience.”

Bitcoin cannot be believed into. It must be experienced into.

The teacher points. The learner journeys. Understanding awakens.

No shortcuts. No substitutes. Knowledge BY or nothing.

§Navigation

← Back to \[[\[fn.0.a|Richmond's Five Processes\]](https://primal.net/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzphnw7gaw5q2dpxqmzhm7al5pky5hmfvcy07urp2czqyh78s4y0c5qqyxzdfk8yuxxdpsfacvtz) ] ↑ Up to \[[\[fn.0|Knowledge vs Understanding\]](https://primal.net/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzphnw7gaw5q2dpxqmzhm7al5pky5hmfvcy07urp2czqyh78s4y0c5qythwumn8ghj77rdwgh82um9dehhxarj9ehhyee0qyfhwumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetsv9njuetn9uqzvenfv4kxgttwda6x2uedddhx7amvv4jxwefdweej6atwv3jhyum5v9hxg6twvuqeswm8) ] → Continue to \[\[[fn.0.b1|Knowledge and Understanding: The Huxley Framework\]](https://primal.net/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzphnw7gaw5q2dpxqmzhm7al5pky5hmfvcy07urp2czqyh78s4y0c5qythwumn8ghj77rdwgh82um9dehhxarj9ehhyee0qyfhwumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetsv9njuetn9uqqsv3cvejrzdfexswx3r77) ]

§Cross-References

• See also: \[[\[fn.0.a|Richmond's Five Processes\]](https://primal.net/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzphnw7gaw5q2dpxqmzhm7al5pky5hmfvcy07urp2czqyh78s4y0c5qqyxzdfk8yuxxdpsfacvtz) ] — Operationalizes Huxley’s distinction

• See also: \[[\[fn.0.f|Glasersfeld's Scheme Theory\]](https://primal.net/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzphnw7gaw5q2dpxqmzhm7al5pky5hmfvcy07urp2czqyh78s4y0c5qqyrzvpsvgerye3he3a2dy) ] — Provides mechanism for OF→BY transition

• See also: \[[\[fn.1.b|Orange Pill as Transformation\]]](https://primal.net/a/naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzphnw7gaw5q2dpxqmzhm7al5pky5hmfvcy07urp2czqyh78s4y0c5qythwumn8ghj77rdwgh82um9dehhxarj9ehhyee0qyfhwumn8ghj7ur4wfcxcetsv9njuetn9uqzcenfv4kxgttwda6x2tt5dpjj6mmjv9hxwefdwp5kcmpdv9ej6arjv9h8xen0wfkkzarfdahqkaczpd) — The moment OF becomes BY

• See also: [[step.06|Perturbation]] — How to create conditions for transformation

fn.0.b — Huxley’s Knowledge OF vs BY — December 2025 “Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing.” — Aldous Huxley