Exploring the Diverse Landscape of Human Knowledge
What’s to Know?
The term knowledge is a concept requiring careful examination to distinguish and understand its essence. We strive to know what we know, systematize this knowledge, explain it to others, and critically evaluate its sources.
Sources of Knowledge
Humans have two primary sources of knowledge: sensitivity and reason.
- Sensitivity provides experience of basic things.
- Data from sensitivity are always within a theoretical context that makes them intelligible.
- Experience and reason are invariably intertwined.
Forms of Knowledge
Common or Ordinary Knowledge
Common knowledge is founded on the experience of everyday life.
Scientific Knowledge
Scientific knowledge seeks the systematic organization of knowledge and explains why facts are the way they are.
Technical Knowledge
Technique consists in knowing how to perform certain activities. It seeks to control and dominate the world. Technical challenges in science promote new discoveries, and science would be impossible without the help of technique.
Philosophical Knowledge
Philosophical knowledge arises from asking philosophical questions. The responses of philosophical systems can be considered as a set of perspectives from which thinkers throughout history have tried to understand reality and develop this knowledge. To philosophize is to think, using reason to argue critically and rigorously in order to understand the fundamental structure of reality.
Artistic Knowledge
Artistic narrative is closely linked with explanations. Literature, film, poetry, etc., each in its own way, narrate the experience of life.
Religious Knowledge
Religious knowledge concerns the sacred or divine.
Evolution of the Term ‘Science’
Science in the Greek World
In the Greek world, science was episteme, the highest type of knowledge.
- Plato believed episteme was self-knowledge of the intelligible, eternal, and immutable world.
- Aristotle considered episteme the supreme level of knowledge or wisdom.
Science and philosophy were kinds of knowledge with pretensions of universality, necessity, immutability, and eternity.
The Scientific Revolution
The notion of modern science emerged during the Renaissance with the Scientific Revolution. This era marked the divergence of science and philosophy. The two elements that distinguish scientific knowledge from philosophical knowledge were experimentation and the application of mathematics. Experimentation involves a set of activities properly planned with the help of mathematical formulas. The goal of scientific knowledge is not to determine what things are, but how they behave.
Is Science Philosophy?
One could say that philosophy is a rigorous science of understanding. However, philosophy is not science as we understand it today.
Types of Science
A field becomes a science when it defines its object of study and, especially, when it proposes its own method. The characteristic that essentially defines a science is its method—a pre-planned, organized way of thinking and acting aimed at achieving a specific end.
Method of Formal Sciences
Formal sciences refer to the formal way of reasoning. The two types of demonstration are deduction and induction.
- Deduction is used in both formal and empirical science. Deduction derives a conclusion from premises.
- The ideal methodology for formal sciences is the axiomatic system. Axioms are fundamental, undemonstrable principles. Rules within the system allow for the formation and transformation of axioms. Theorems are statements obtained deductively from axioms or other already proven theorems.
Method of Natural Sciences
Natural sciences have used inductive proof. The complete method of natural science is called the hypothetico-deductive method because it combines induction and deduction.
Inductive Proof
Induction is a type of reasoning where a conclusion is obtained from a series of individual cases known through experience.
- Complete induction starts with knowledge of every single case occurring in an area.
- Incomplete induction relies on a series of individual tests, not including all possible cases.
Hypothetico-Deductive Method
This method is structured in three levels:
- Protocol statements express phenomena in the world capable of being empirically observed.
- Laws are universal statements expressing regular and unchanging relationships between specific events. Before a statement can be considered a universal law of nature, it is a hypothesis—an unverified statement. If experience confirms it, it becomes a law.
- Theories are universal statements from which all the laws of a particular science can be deduced.
The steps of the hypothetico-deductive method are:
- Observation/Experimentation
- Formulating one or more explanatory hypotheses
- Expressing the hypothesis mathematically
- Subjecting the consequences to verification (verification and falsification)
- Accepting the hypothesis as a law
Method of Social Sciences
The purpose of social science is to understand social reality.
Features:
- Lower predictive ability than natural sciences.
- Lower generalization ability than natural sciences.
- Evaluative neutrality is impossible.
Its methods are:
- Empirical: Seeks the unity of science, applying the methods of natural sciences to social sciences.
- Hermeneutics: Considers social sciences as having a different status and requiring a distinct methodology.
Two methodological approaches:
- Explaining a phenomenon
- Understanding an event by capturing its meaning within a context
Techniques of social sciences can be quantitative and qualitative.