Sources, Forms, and Classification of Knowledge
What is Knowledge?
To know is to be in contact with reality in order to understand it. It also relates to other concepts: to make conscious what is known, to systematize what is known. Therefore, to question what knowledge is, is a critical examination. Knowledge is an apprehension of reality through which reality is fixed in an individual, expressed, and transmitted to other subjects, incorporated into a system and tradition.
Sources of Knowledge
Sensitivity and reason. Experience provides basic things. Experience and reason are always mixed. Experience also depends on several instances of the human capable of producing and interpreting it. Reason also produces different forms of knowledge, generally related to experience.
Forms of Knowledge
Knowledge can be classified in different ways, according to the object we focus on:
- Scientific knowledge
- Common knowledge
- Technical knowledge
- Artistic knowledge
- Religious knowledge
- Philosophical knowledge
Common or Ordinary Knowledge
Common knowledge is based on everyday experience. This knowledge is not systematic and is usually mixed with all types of prejudices.
Scientific Knowledge
Scientific knowledge is a systematic, rigorous, and critical knowledge. Philosophical knowledge differs from modern science. Modern science was understood as experimentation and the application of mathematics to the study of reality.
Technical Knowledge
Technical knowledge is knowing how to do certain activities. The relationship between scientific knowledge and technique is one of interaction. Today, this interaction is called technology.
Philosophical Knowledge
Philosophical knowledge is acquired by questioning. Philosophical thinking argues using reason critically and rigorously in order to understand the fundamental structure of reality. Its style is more linked to narrative than explanation.
Religious Knowledge
Religious knowledge is knowledge about the divine or the sacred.
The Evolution of Science
The notion of science has been closely linked to philosophy. In the Greek world, the most elaborate kind of knowledge was episteme. Both science and philosophy were kinds of knowledge with pretensions of universality, immutability, and eternity. The notion of modern science emerged during the Renaissance, when the so-called Scientific Revolution occurred. The difference between science and philosophy lies in experiments and mathematics. Philosophy is not a science as we understand it today. Science and philosophy are not the same.
Classification of Sciences
It seems that science becomes regarded as such when its object of study is delimited, especially when it proposes its own method. Some authors consider that a feature that characterizes the scientific method is fundamentally a way of thinking or acting previously planned and orderly, oriented towards the achievement of an end. The methods of scientific knowledge are:
Formal Sciences
Formal sciences do not refer to facts of experience but to the shape of reasoning. The two types of demonstration most frequent in science are deduction and induction.
Deduction
Deduction is the reasoning process that allows deriving from one or more given premises, called propositions, a conclusion. The ideal of methodological sciences is to constitute a formal axiomatic system adopted in its entirety in a deductive structure. Axioms are fundamental principles within the system that are not demonstrable. They are selected either for their usefulness in the fertility of science, for implantation, or for evidence. Rules of formation and transformation are those that can be used to draw valid new statements, and those that extend the system. Theorems are statements obtained deductively from axioms or other theorems already demonstrated.
Natural Sciences
Natural sciences use the hypothetical-deductive method of demonstration, with moments of induction and moments of deduction.
Induction
Induction is a kind of reasoning in which a general conclusion is reached from a series of individual cases known through experience. According to Hume, one cannot reach an absolutely certain conclusion in the empirical sciences, as they do not verify each and every one of the natural phenomena. Therefore, certainty does not exist, according to the empirical method.
Hypothetical-Deductive Method
The complete method of natural sciences is structured on three levels:
- Express the phenomena of the world in protocol statements that can be observed empirically.
- Laws are universal statements that express behavior or the relation of specific phenomena in a regular and invariable manner.
- Theories are universal statements from which all the laws of a particular science can be deduced.
The steps of the hypothetical-deductive method are:
- Starting point: to capture, through observation and/or experimentation, an unresolved problem for which there is no knowledge or solution available.
- Several hypotheses are developed to explain the observed fact or detected issue.
- The hypothesis is formulated mathematically, and consequences are deduced and contrasted with experience.
- The consequences undergo experimentation. Verification: a hypothesis is true when the observed events are consistent with the facts of the hypothesis. Falsification: a hypothesis is false or refuted when the facts do not accord with the facts of the deduction.
- The hypothesis tested in a number of cases is accepted as law. Several established laws are unified using a general theory from which they can be derived deductively.
Social Sciences
The object of social sciences is social reality, which raises a peculiar relationship between the subject and object of knowledge. This fact gives social sciences the following characteristics:
- The ability of prediction is lower than in the natural sciences because it involves the freedom of the human subject.
- The ability of generalization is lower than in the natural sciences because of the diversity of human events.
There are even major areas of knowledge that deal with generalizable and unrepeatable facts. There are two different approaches:
- Empirical-analytical: it pursued the unity of science and demanded the application of the method of natural sciences to social sciences.
- Hermeneutics: it believes that social sciences have a different status and must adopt a methodology of their own.
From this, two classes of methodological focus should emerge: one aimed at explanation and the other at understanding. To explain a phenomenon is to know the causes that produce it. To understand an event consists of capturing its meaning, so it is necessary to place oneself within the facts. Some authors use the notion of comprehensive explanation because they believe that sometimes it is not possible to separate explanation and understanding. The techniques of social sciences can be quantitative and qualitative.