Epistemology: Understanding Knowledge and Its Origins

Posted on Dec 9, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Epistemology

Epistemology is concerned with defining knowledge and related concepts, sources, criteria, types of knowledge possible, the degree to which each is true, and the exact relationship between the knower and the object known.

What is the act of knowing? What is the essence of knowledge? What is the relationship between cognitive men and things around you?

• The simplest operation tells us that to know is to obtain information about an object. To know is to get a point or a story about something. Knowledge is that news or information about the object.
• Epistemology is the doctrine of the foundations and methods of scientific knowledge.
• Epistemology examines the criteria by which knowledge is justified, considering the historical, psychological, and sociological.
• Epistemology focuses on scientific knowledge, for what is considered the Theory of Science.

Epistemology and Its Relationship with Other Fields

• Philosophy of Science – This discipline is the most comprehensive and covers the field of metaphysics. Is there any objective reality or an illusion of the senses? For epistemology, the answer to that question is irrelevant.

• Methodology – For the methodologist, knowledge is not questioned but seen as something already accepted as valid by the scientific community. Methodology focuses on finding strategies to increase awareness. It could be argued that the method is the procedure to achieve the objectives and methodology is the study of the method.

• The Theory of Knowledge – It is a philosophical theory.
• Philosophy – The term philosophy means love of wisdom, or in other words, I want to know, to know.

Immediately, it denotes that you cannot get a definition of philosophy that is essential for uses other methods.

Plato and Aristotle define philosophy as a pure science, and it is respectively the pursuit of virtue or happiness.

Dilthey says the first thing to try is to find a common objective content on all those systems whose views are formed all systems of philosophy.

These systems are of Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, and in all of them, we find a slope on the universality, guidance on the objective totality.

E.g., Being, Essence, Knowledge.

In all knowledge, we can establish four elements:

• Subject to the knower.
• The object known.
• Knowing the same transaction.
• The result.

Levels of Knowledge

Humans can catch the object in three different levels:

• Sensible – It consists of capturing an object through the senses. Images captured by the view through it can store in our minds the images of things, with color, shape, and dimensions. Sensitive knowledge is unique.

E.g., You can view and maintain the image of my father as such – that is sensitive or unique knowledge. The father’s image is color and size and represents a person.

• Conceptual – Representations consist of invisible, intangible, but universal and essential. Conceptual knowledge is universal.

Example: Consider the concept of parent includes all parents – this is universal knowledge. The concept of father has no color or size.

• Holistic – At this level, there are no colors, sizes, or structures, so knowledge is general.

The Origin of Knowledge

• Rationalism

The term “rationalism” has a very broad meaning: In general, we call rational any philosophical position that favors the use of reason compared to other bodies such as faith, authority, life, the irrational, empirical experience, etc. It is rationalistic all who believe that the foundation, the supreme principle is the reason.

The term “rationalism” is commonly used in the history of philosophy to describe a certain form of knowledge base: It is conceivable that knowledge rests on reason, however, although it may have different meanings and apply in different areas. The term “rationalism” is primarily used to refer to the current philosophy of the modern era that began with Descartes, developed in continental Europe with Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibniz, and opposed to empiricism.

Features

• The thesis that all our knowledge about reality comes not from the senses but of reason, of understanding itself.
• Knowledge can be constructed deductively from some first principles.
• The first principles of knowledge cannot be drawn from experience; they are already on the understanding: the innateness of ideas.
• Consideration of the deduction and further intellectual intuition as the most appropriate methods for the exercise of thought.
• The consideration of mathematics as an ideal science.
• Claiming the ontological argument for the proof of the existence of God.
• The optimistic assessment of the power of reason, that has no limits and can reach all real.

Representatives

In Old Age

• Greek philosopher Plato – Since Descartes posited the days before the dominance of reason. He has the deep conviction that true knowledge must be distinguished by the possession of the notes to the logical necessity and universal validity.

Into the Modern Age

• René Descartes – Maintained that only through reason could discover certain universal truths self-evident, for which it is possible to deduce the rest of the contents of philosophy and science. Stated that these self-evident truths were innate, not from experience.
• Philosopher Baruch Spinoza – Continued with the position of Descartes and its state system is a single substance and the inability to have another. This unique substance has two attributes: thought and extension. All I see on the outside, all that experience in the interior, are merely phenomena of the one substance.
• Nicolas Malebranche – One of the most eminent disciples of Descartes, was characterized by exaggerated occasionalism. Inaccurately been called Cartesian system of occasional causes, as Descartes defends him, and before it seems that the opposite opinion.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Cannot play an issue without making any new ideas. This is an extraordinary man in whom the genius abounds, even in their most bizarre theories.

• Empiricism

The term empiricism comes from the Greek word ???????? (Latin translation is experientia), which when translated means experience.

Empiricism is the philosophical trend which sees experience as a criterion or standard of truth in knowledge, that developed in the seventeenth being opposed to rationalism, with a view to determining the origin of knowledge. In ancient times both for the Greeks to Romans, refers to doctors and architects generally getting their skills with experiences in contrast to the theoretical knowledge. It is not the personal partition repeatable situations, but the repeated experience of certain situations, we offer a criteria (objective and impersonal) to know the situations.

When we speak of experience we refer more accurately to the experience or set of perceptions. Empires to any philosophical theory that considers the cognitive senses as appropriate for knowledge. Throughout the history of philosophy have provided different forms of empiricism, some radical and other moderate, for example in Greek philosophy may be cited Aristotelian philosophy and the philosophy atomistic and empiricist philosophies than Plato or Parmenides. The authors also find medieval thought much inclined to empiricism, as William of Occam, in modern philosophy classical empiricism, and in the twentieth century neo-positivism.

In philosophy > as name of school or thinking, arises in the modern age as a philosophical trend that developed mainly in the UK, often seen as opposed to so-called rationality that is more characteristic of continental philosophy.

Empiricism maintains that the only source of human knowledge are the senses, i.e., sensory experience. According to empiricism, the spirit does not contribute in the development of knowledge, it is like a blank sheet on which is the experience he writes. All the concepts even more general and abstract are fruits of sensory experiences.

Features

Are summarized in the following:

• Denied the absolutization of truth at least denies that absolute truth accessible to man.
• The whole truth must be tested, from experience, may eventually be changed, corrected, or abandoned.
• Experience as the only source of knowledge. The origin of knowledge is experience, meaning she perceived external sensible objects (things) and the internal operations of the mind (emotions, feelings, etc.). So for empiricists, the only criterion of truth is the sensory experience.
• Denial of innate ideas of the rationalists. If all knowledge comes from experience, this means that must be acquired. The mind does not have any knowledge (innate ideas), but is like a “tabula rasa” or a “blank sheet”, a vacuum receptacle to be “filled” from the experience and the learning.
• Human knowledge is limited: the experience is its limit. This position is rationally opposed to that of the rationalists, for that reason, using an appropriate method, has no limits and could know everything. Empiricists restrict the ability of the human mind: the experience is its limit, and beyond it is not lawful to go but want to fall into error by attributing everything that is not “experienced” an objective reality and existence.
• Denial of the target value of universal concepts. Empiricists accept the nominalist assumption that universal concepts do not refer to any reality itself (objective), but are mere names for a particular set of ideas or “perceptions” simple who are linked. Any complex idea has to be explained by a combination or mixture of ideas simple. The general concepts are just descriptions of these combinations more or less “stable” simple ideas.
• The experimental method and empirical science. The interest in finding an appropriate method to direct the thought was one of the main interests for both the rationalism and empiricism. The difference between them lies in that, yes for the ideal method was rationalistic and deductive mathematical, for empiricists should be experimental or inductive.

Science cannot be based on assumptions or assumptions that are not contrasted with the experience. The validity of the scientific theories depends on empirical verification. Except in mathematics that do not involve Sobesos facts but on our own ideas and their laws of association.

• Predicates as good or bad does not occur in the experience. We know things and their physical but moral or aesthetic qualities cannot be perceived, have no cognitive value but the idea of human life is the feeling.

Representatives

Aristotle: Aristotle who is perhaps best expressed the value of knowledge from experience. However, it is the first that reflects on the value of knowledge from experience and the inductive method referred to a scientific knowledge as “observation of nature.”

John Locke (1632-1704): the most influential English empiricist.

The only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori knowledge (knowledge based on experience). His famous proposition that the mind is like a blank slate, on which are written from the experiences derived from sense impressions as the a person’s life continues.

According to Locke, our knowledge of things is a perception of ideas.

Locke is at the forefront of the philosophy the problem of knowledge, setting in motion the great contest around their bases, certainties and limits. The thesis that all our knowledge have their origin in experience. Experience is the foundation of all we know, and there is where the ultimately derives our knowledge.

David Hume (1711-1776): Considered the best example and developed a more radical empiricism with a more skeptical view. The key point of Hume’s thought lies in its theory of association of ideas.

It is Hume who has to its logical empiricist direction began with Bacon. For him, ideas are copies vivid blurry and without direct impressions.

According to Hume, both the perception and reflection give us a number of elements that we ascribe to the substance to support them. But does not limit his criticism of the material substance but the self.

For Hume, knowledge cannot grow to a metaphysical truth. Neither agree that there innate ideas, since all the contents of consciousness from the experience.

Like Locke, Hume, does derive all knowledge of the mind, from experience. The knowledge of the mind are called perceptions, and divided into impressions and ideas impressions are immediate data of experience, such as external sensations, passions, emotions, etc. entering the force in the minds of men, with ideas described by Hume, and attenuated copies or prints images in thought and reason

Hume leads to the ultimate consequences of Locke’s empiricism and continuing Berkeley, using the psychological analysis of the contents of experience “A set of impressions generate an association of ideas about a fact and one opinion about For Hume there is nothing innate nothing a priori, the principles of existence arising from same.

George Berkeley (1685-1753) philosopher irlandés.-points out that as all we really perceive are the qualities, while the matter further assume anything, it should be removed, leaving only the reality consists of two elements: the minds and ideas that they experience directly. , Hence the famous esse est percipi, whose only exception (to Berkeley) is God.

Berkeley part of the doctrine established by Locke. Do not believe the general ideas, no matter exists for it. He argues that “everyone is just material representation or perception of mine. There is only the spiritual self, which we have an intuitive certainty”.

Berkeley’s philosophy is surprising in the sense that an abbreviated wording makes it appear so different from the worldview of the common man, which inevitably attracts attention.

The objects, according to Berkeley, of human knowledge and ideas are actually printed on the senses, or care received by the passions and operations of the mind or, finally, ideas formed by help of imagination and memory.

For Berkeley there is no abstract ideas, all ideas are particular or concrete and come from external and internal senses.

Differences between Empiricism and Rationalism

• Dogmatism

Doctrine that human cognitive abilities can reach the truth on their own and with full certainty.

Dogmatism is the activity of the naive man, is the oldest and original position both in the psychological sense as historical.

The philosophers who strongly insist on the principles terminated for not paying attention to facts, arguments to cast doubt on such grounds, were called Dogmatic.

Features

• Contemplative men, able to be amazed by what they see.
• They take care of the universe, to describe reality in its entirety.
• They wonder Arche at the beginning or from where things come from.
• The dogmatic thesis maintained rigorously and it is slightly open to dialogue.

Philosopher Dogmatic

Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Diogenes, Socrates, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Democritus and Leucippus.

• Subjectivism and Relativism

Subjectivism – Is the philosophical position which serves as the primary factor of all truth and morality and mental individuality of the subject material particular, ever-changing and impossible to transcend into an absolute and universal truth. The subjectivist believes that everyone has their own truth.

Subjectivism does depend on the individual internal factors.

Relativism – Believes that truth depends on or is related to the subject, person or group who experiences it, and that in some ways there can be no universal agreement shared by all humans.

Relativism stresses the almost exclusive dependence on external influences.

Agent

• Protagoras – Born in Abdera in the year 480. He was prosecuted for blasphemy because of his religious ideas, and reportedly drowned during a storm to flee Athens. He died in 410 BC.

The most famous philosophical principle of Protagoras refers to the status of man faced with the world around him. Protagoras says that “man is the measure of all things.” The latter, according to Diogenes Laertius would have been as follows: “Man is the measure of all things, which are in being, for those who are not in that they are.”

• Borgia – Born in Leontino (Sicily) in the year 483 BC, was a disciple of Empedocles and Tisia. He left to pursue philosophy oratory. He died in 390.

He belonged to the group that removed the criterion of truth. In his book “From the nature or about not being” progressive establishment of three theses that constitute the highest expression of “philosophical nihilism:” The first, nothing is the second, if something was, would be unknowable, the third if anything was and we knew it would be incommunicable to others. “

• Friedrich Nietzsche – Was born in Röcken (Germany) in 1844. With Wagner’s influence begins to write the Origin of Tragedy. He was professor of classical philology at the University of Basel. In 1889 he suffered a mental breakdown, the disease that afflicts is schizophrenia. He died in Weimar in 1900.

Nietzsche is the epitome of nihilism, which means that “nothing has value, nothing is known. Calls for an irrational view of the universe. The truth cannot be an absolute or definitive, but is always relative, individual, or as the same I said “the truth is always be in error.” Within this relativity, that prospect will be more conducive to real life, that you follow the instincts of life. “

Currently most of the negative thought comes in the form of Nietzsche. Subjectivism and relativism is presented today in two ways: psychological and biological, the only difference is that the latter goes a little more

The psychologists say that the laws really are consecutive and negative to the same subject.

Biologism, somewhat into the keeping by any means short.

Since the man works for will to power as the beginning of a new position value is not subject cruelly as they formerly did, you can now express their beliefs and ways of seeing things. Now is targeted more towards the path of tolerance.

• Pragmatism

Etymologically the word pragmatism comes from the Greek word “pragma” which means action or deed. Pragmatism is based on the utility, the utility remains the foundation of all meaning.

The principle of pragmatism which determines the meaning of truth for its practical utility.

In the work of William James, pragmatism is formulated as a method to resolve the philosophical discussions by comparing the practical consequences, detached from such and such a theory and a theory of truth is what works best for us, which best suits every part of life and may join the whole of our experience.

For Pragmatism, in comparison with other schools such as empiricism or rationalism that deal as to whether the knowledge and / or truth is the product of experience or reason, that no matter how you gain knowledge, then outline the important thing is the usefulness of knowledge.

Assumptions

Pragmatism believes that man is incapable of capturing the inner essence of things, that human reason is incapable of solving the metaphysical riddles and diverts his attention to practical results, vital ideas and beliefs. For the pragmatic thought is true when it is useful and promoter of life.

• Pragmatism is opposed to rationalism and formalism, as opposed to the vision of human concepts and intellect.
• Rejects the existence of absolute truths, for them the ideas are provisional and are subject to change, according to research.

• Criticism

It is a philosophical trend which holds that knowledge is possible for man, accepting that it may come to possess the truth, knowledge can give certainty, but indispensable rationally justify how we come to knowledge: that is, as we knowledge and how we are given the reality.

Criticism examines all claims of human reason and not accept anything carelessly. Whenever asked about the motives and calls to account of human reason. His behavior is not dogmatic or Skeptical but reflective and critical. It is midway between recklessness and despair dogmatic skeptical.

Epistemology in the Twentieth Century

In the early twentieth century epistemological problems are discussed in depth and fine shades of difference began to divide the various competing schools of thought. Special attention was paid to the relationship between the act of perceiving something, the object perceived in a direct way and the thing can be said is known as a result of self-perception.

During the twentieth century was forged three basic models of interpretation of scientific knowledge:

• Logical Empiricism.
• The Humanist Socio-historicism.
• Critical Rationalism.

Inductive-empiricism low fees identified with the word positivism “became the most influential interpretation of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century, reacting against speculative knowledge and advocating rigorous knowledge, subject to validation rules based on verifiable experience.

After 1920, the city of Vienna formed a famous group of scholars, known as the Vienna Circle. “ The Vienna Circle was a good number of epistemological theses, among which include:

1. Demarcation: What distinguishes scientific knowledge from others is its verifiability with respect to verifiable facts, so the empirical verification is the specific criterion of demarcation between science and non science.

2. Probabilistic Induction: The production of scientific knowledge begins with the obvious facts susceptible of observation, classification, measurement and management. Since a data set of all of the same class is beyond the circumstances of time / space researcher, the process of generalization of specific observations have to rely on probability models.

3. Logical language: The statements shall be scientific only if it can be expressed through symbols and they can be interconnected by syntactic operations of a formalized language.

4. Unification of science: all scientific knowledge is identified by one and the same pattern. On the epistemological and methodological, not differ from each scientific knowledge ascribed to different areas. There is only one philosophy of science, a single program of scientific development for all humanity.

Ever since the first statements of the Vienna Circle, there was criticism of rationalist to the empirical-inductive argument that school. The most important representative of this criticism, the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper published his famous “logic of scientific research in 1934, when Vienna theses are in progress. Popper began to be truly considered since 1960, becoming probably the philosopher of science that has had more influence on numerous research and scientific methodologies.

The main thesis of this current can be summarized as follows:

• Demarcation: what distinguishes science from other types of systematic knowledge is your chance to be rejected by the data of reality. In the rationalist approach, a scientific statement will be far more risk or risk a confrontation that is proven to lie.
• Deductive theoretical knowledge: the twentieth century rationalism declared invalid the knowledge constructed by generalization of a particular case and conceived as a simple description and systematization of regularities detected in the studied. The fundamental characteristic of rationalism is the theoretical concept of knowledge in terms of predictive and retrodictiva explanation, based on a deductive way controlled by logical-mathematical formula.
• Critical realism: as a rejection of both idealism and naive realism, it adopted the concept of critical realism, in which it is valid to identify knowledge with the objects studied, where is the need of a critical consideration of research products to deepen the differences between objective and subjective results.

However, in interpreting empirical-inductive and rationalist, there are two common elements:

• The analytical concept of science;

• The scant attention to the socio-historical conditions of scientific knowledge.

Against these two elements will be common, since 1970, a strong reaction that begins with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, physicist Thomas S. Khun, continues with the method of Paul Feyerabend and continues to call the Frankfurt School, whose thesis go beyond epistemology and whose manifestation is the most elaborate theory of communicative action of Jürgen Habermas.

Kuhn argues that scientific claims are not exceeded one another through processes of verification or falsification, but change under the crisis and loss of faith in a particular scientific paradigm, and this depends much more than historical socio knowledge processes in themselves.

The authors argued that phenomenological knowledge objects are the same as the objects perceived. The neo-realists have argued that direct perceptions of physical objects or parts of physical objects rather than the mental states of each one. Critical realists adopted an intermediate position, holding that although receiving only sensory data, such as colors and sounds, they represent physical objects on which to provide knowledge.

The German philosopher Edmund Husserl developed a procedure, phenomenology, to address the problem of clarifying the relationship between cognition and the object known. Through the phenomenological method can distinguish how things are from how you think they really are, thus achieving a more precise understanding of the conceptual foundations of knowledge.

The Fundamental Epistemology and Its Moments

Epistemology as a philosophical discipline appears at the beginning of the twentieth century, primarily among members of the Vienna Circle and has even threatened to become the only meaningful philosophical activity and usefulness, casting into oblivion, as I wanted COMTE all claims metaphysics of going beyond the phenomena (facts) and the sciences that they occupy.

However, this state of things, namely, the need for revised modern science itself, recognizes a source that coincides with the birth of modern science, especially physics, which dates back to the sixteenth and seventeenth .

• The first time, Descartes, philosopher and scientist, at a time, which has the honor of inaugurating modernity philosophically. Descartes seeks truth, evidence that will withstand any possible doubt that it will enable construction on the building of science. This firm foundation is found in the certainty of their existence. Forcing the doubt until the hyperbole, I can doubt the reality of the physical world and yet the truth of mathematics. But doubt has destroyed everything, only this certainty has resisted. Hence, such knowledge, both scientific as vulgar, reality refers to the divine truth clearly how the new physical science in a metaphysical order (and religious) the merits (Gnund).

A little before Descartes, Galileo imagined thoughts of God figure in establishing a physical law. For him, science is merely playing the divine plan for Creation. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, Leibniz was still seeking a metaphysical foundation for Newtonian science, which were threatening to break away from the ontological questions under the influence of empiricism. Monads and pre-established harmony by God to them is what underlies this phenomenon “well founded” describing Newton. The question is what is behind the phenomena (or representations, almost synonymous) is what God urges answer invariably occupies a prominent place in all these philosophical systems that are built along the XVII and XVIII.

• The second stage occurs with Kant, which operates the gap between metaphysics and natural science. For Kant, Metaphysics has not yet managed to become science, while natural science has progressed significantly. It is capital’s distinction between thinking and knowing, thinking of the metaphysical objects (God, soul, world, etc..) But not know because, given the immateriality of infinity or, in the absence of sensitive data from them. Knowing in the strong sense is knowing nature.

Kant, however, Metaphysics reserve a place, by the fact (factum) that there is moral and it is considered some actions as good and others as bad. Morality tells us that there is something beyond nature and allows some access to metaphysical objects. But we will not get them a scientific knowledge but a rational faith in the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, etc.. Conveniently excised and subjected to criticism, metaphysical science is held as a separate and independent of the triumphant natural science.

• The third time is met with Augusto Comte. The explanation of reality by appealing to metaphysical entities belonging to a past has been overcome. Humanity has definitely entered a positive phase in which there is only room for science and its practitioners.

Is an urgent need to give up all sorts of metaphysical because experience is the sole criterion of truth (legacy of empiricism). Science deals exclusively with positive developments as they occur in observation and experiment, curbing the arbitrariness of the fantasy that always tends to elucubrar metaempíricas interpretations of reality. The philosophy is reduced to compiling of the special sciences, helping to fix their relationships and interdependence. Just as in the Middle Ages philosophy was simple theologiae (handmaiden of theology), but science and its mission is to rebuild on their behalf the spiritual unity that theology had been achieved.

Human society, on the other hand, integrates natural reality and social facts must be found that the laws of the chair. Birth of the social sciences, real continuity of research in areas which hitherto had belonged to philosophy.

The other major change is that Comte introduced the waiver by the scientist to know the causes of events as this invariably leads to posit mysterious forces at work in natural beings. Science only deals with relations between the facts: to go beyond a job for poets, not serious scientists and philosophers. That is, not going after the absolute but as relative (of the theory of relativity Einstein). A positivist science is not concerned to discern what is electricity: just say that “electricity” is the name given to something that is supposed to base of electrical phenomena, which themselves are under our observation.

Comte said that, “no currency worth Aristotle that” knowing something “is to know their cause, that is, rests on the fact that its foundation. And not worth opening the question of Socrates. What …?. The scientist just “puts names and does not care about, such as Aristotle, the definitions, but how the facts.”

So, Comte and dreams of his generation have reached a definitive stage in knowledge. The program has identified positivist zeal the field of sound science, preventing any kind of undue speculation leads to sterile philosophical and metaphysical. It is from within science itself where serious problems begin to emerge.

• The fourth time: The crisis of positive science. By 1895, he discovered X-rays and the structure of atoms and over the years will “appear” a swarm of new massless subatomic particles evident. Of not knowing what’s the matter with certainty and then it will have different schemes and theories going to try to explain what happens in the experiments. Physics being neither clear nor objective, and only brought uneasiness to the spirits in favor of light and good sense.

Francis Bacon had coined the slogan, that “knowledge is power”: if you want to dominate nature, is necessary before meeting her.

This relationship appears altered and inverted currently able to do things without knowing exactly what is the basis or principle from which they were derived. Even appear contradictory theories simultaneously requesting admission as scientific, but cannot decide which one is true, if the two are, or who knows what. A familiar example: the direction of the light wave nature shows us and this is a fact, as claimed by science, this experiment comes from a repeatable and predictable.But the photoelectric phenomenon, another event, try their particle nature. Only we have to imagine that sometime in the future of science will come out, the irony is worth a theory that embraces both facts and does away with the contradiction. Who will guarantee that this state of science possible, to begin with and available to man, to end? Nobody, of course. The place that God assigned Descartes has been empty since Nietzsche announced his death. All that remains is a mere assumption that every scientist ineradicable is forced to accept, namely, the fact (historical) that Western science progresses towards a hypothetical final state of complete knowledge.

The nature of both corpuscular and wave of photons and electrons, the simultaneous presence of a particle here and elsewhere, perhaps random mutations of genes, and so on., Are events that occur in scientists feel that the same logic capsized, which corresponds to the logical development of versatile and non-Euclidean geometries that are held without contradiction. In short, the reason it seems to have gone mad and move at a frenetic pace that makes most men, even the educated, are marginalized science as their colossal gaping spectators progress. This madness of scientific reason, comparable in some sense to the madness of reason metaphysics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has an important consequence: the return to philosophy. What is man in the midst of dehumanizing technology? What is the ethics that should govern science?

Finally, science has occupied the whole scene on behalf of sound rational but has not yet managed to answer fundamental questions. It was an illusion and we must admit that the economic progress that enabled science resulted in marginalization, poverty and rampant exploitation of nature that abound spiritualist cults that thrive in the shadow of fear and uncertainty that people feel about their status and destiny, the world of science is the same world in which rampant irrationality.

Legal Science

Legal Science is characterized by:

• Regulations –

Describe rules and regulations through a trial does Imputed “should be.”

• Value-free –

That is limited to explaining the positive law applies without qualifying as good as bad. The rating of fair or unfair law is not a task of science but of philosophy.

• Autonomous –

Separated from the natural sciences and social causes (sociology) and ethics.

The object of legal science is the study of law in force, therefore the fundamental element to which attention is the norm which can then be applied within a social group. The legal science aims a rigorous study of law in force, regardless of the criteria on which that is founded or is justified.

The law is a normative science, its object is constituted by rules.

The Law and the Scientific Status

It is, perhaps, because the statement ever made on the scientific Kirchman law has started all this controversy full of contradictions in the various concepts that gives science and law, and the relationship they may have .

But as we know neither the notion of science is saved from the effects “devastating” the passage of time and this changes relatively conceptions of law as a science in relation to the debate about whether the scientific methodology is applicable or not in the field of legal science.

But as stated to be purely juridical science a science, this would have to engaging only in the description of the law, it would be the only way to avoid the presence of subjectivity in knowledge or to achieve the desired neutrality. It is handled here, therefore, a notion of science that is associated with evaluative knowledge or objectivity.

In our view it would be wrong to omit the importance of law as a process, although this contradicts the importance of the Pure Theory of Law Kelsen, we believe it is

important to reformulate the concept of law and understand it not as knowledge, and technical separately; , but as the two sides of one coin to be complemented for achieving the supreme goal of this science: “To achieve the welfare of society through justice, peace and certainty.”

Therefore it seems appropriate to conceive of legal science as a science and not just as you describe and systematize the law, but in terms of problem solving can meet the standards that govern what is considered scientific practice in the community legal, through observation and use of scientific methodology to solve problems.