There is an authentic relationship between learning and knowledge. Every new knowledge, whether it is a fact, a value or a skill, results directly from specific learning. Thus, it is noted that the first definition of learning in language dictionaries accompanies knowledge verbally and behaviorally. Using the terms of independent and dependent scientific research factors, learning (with its various processes and stimuli) is considered an independent factor, while the new knowledge obtained from learning is a dependent or completely influenced factor, just like drawing and painting; cooking and lunch; crafting and a piece of jewelry, and many other examples in reality. But what must be remembered is that the difference in means, topics and conditions of learning as an independent influential factor leads to partially or completely different forms of knowledge.
But the learning that produces theoretical, practical and moral knowledge, where are its sources of experiences, information or stimuli that it usually processes to produce the required knowledge? The sources of learning stimuli appear in three theories or cognitive schools, which are:
1. The theory of innate knowledge.
Meaning that knowledge is innate and follows from within the individual. The most prominent supporters of this school or theory of knowledge are Socrates and his student Plato, which states that God created the individual and placed in him (in his mind) knowledge or ideas. The task of learning appears in contemplation and self-analysis of the ideas that the individual possesses to produce new knowledge. Hence, we noticed that the mind, for Plato, constitutes the vessel of learning and the means of conducting it in obtaining the required knowledge.
2. Sensory or environmental theory of knowledge.
Meaning that knowledge follows from outside the individual, and thus learning is what the environment imprints on the mind of stimuli or information. Aristotle, Plato’s student, was the first to propose the first principles of this theory, and then contemporary behaviorists, Al-Ghazali, John Locke, Hobbes, and Stewart before them came to follow in Aristotle’s footsteps by proposing different laws in order to control learning or the process of knowledge to obtain the intended knowledge each time.
3. The theory of integration of knowledge or the reconciling theory of knowledge.
which adopted a moderate or middle approach, giving an equal role to the mind and the environment as sources and means of learning. It states that new knowledge (or learning) results from the interaction of the individual (or his mind) with the environment or the sensory stimuli of the environment. Thus, this integrated theory of knowledge and learning combines the theories of Plato and Aristotle together for a more scientific and realistic understanding of the phenomenon of learning. Descartes, Kant, Dewey, and contemporary physiological psychologists are the most proponents of the current theory.
In conclusion, learning is a means of knowledge and its counterpart, and this learning may begin and be formed by the action of the mind as in the theory of innate self-knowledge, or by the environment as in the theory of sensory knowledge, or by the action of the mind and the environment by uniting their experiences together as in the integrated or hybrid theory of knowledge.