How Would We Define Victory?

Well, time to define a few things here. We are trying to discover if human knowledge doubles every 5 years. To do this, we are testing three hypotheses:

1. We learn so much new information that the actual stock of knowledge is double what it was 5 years ago. We are testing this by seeing if scientific publications and patents are doubling every 5 years. We also look and see if there are twice as many scientists and researchers as 5 years ago.
2. That new and old human knowledge is accessible and usable to twice as many people as it was 5 years ago. We're looking at things like the size and reach of websites like Wikipedia, and also referring to our search for more creators and users of information.
3. We are disproving incorrect hypotheses at such a rate that we are doubling human knowledge by unlearning untruths, which corrects mistakes and frees up time for productive learning.

But this is a bit simplistic.  If I know one thing and learn another, have I doubled human knowledge or just what I have learned? Is a learned fact human knowledge before it is published?

If I know one thing and, without learning another, communicate that one thing to another human being, does that double human knowledge because two of us now know it? Or is that just repetition?

If I discover an hypothesis is not correct, does it make any difference if others continue to hold the old and incorrect belief?

And then we must make things difficult by defining knowledge. Many of you will have seen the pyramid that has data at the bottom, information on top of it, then knowledge and then wisdom. The implication is that data is a fact revealed, information is the fact in context, knowledge is is the fact absorbed and assimilated, and wisdom is right action based on knowledge as experienced. But is that an accurate or adequate definition of knowledge? Is it sufficient?

Wikipedia has a definition--it's a bit long, but the start is promising. Of course the start is a quote from Oxford's English Dictionary. "Knowledge is defined (Oxford English Dictionary) variously as (i) facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation." Yeah, that's it.

So does learning that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old mean anything if millions don't believe it? If creationists make learned scientists spend time in court patiently explaining evolution instead of working in the laboratory--their true 'field of the Lord,' have we learned anything? Does knowledge have to be unanimously held, or unanimously available?

Boy, where's a philosopher when you need one?