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What distinction did Wittgenstein make between certainty and knowledge?

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Marble bust of Aristotle with a beard and draped robe, showing detailed facial features and wavy hair, set against a dark background. — metaphysics Detail of a Roman copy (2nd century bce) of a Greek alabaster portrait bust of Aristotle (c. 325 bce); in the collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome.

In his work On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that knowledge and certainty are radically different concepts, neither of which entails the other. Consequently, it is possible to possess knowledge without being certain, and to be certain without having knowledge.1

Wittgenstein rejected the idea that certainty is a form of apprehension or "seeing" that strikes us as immediately true. Instead, he identified certainty with a form of acting. For Wittgenstein, a proposition is certain when its truth is presupposed within the social activities—or "language games"—of a community. He famously noted that while the process of justifying evidence must eventually come to an end, that end is not found in certain propositions we perceive, but rather in the shared human actions that form the foundation of our language.1