Lecture 2: What is knowledge? Ways of knowing Flashcards
1
Q
What are the three groups of sciences?
A
- natural sciences
- social sciences
- humanities
2
Q
What are natural sciences?
A
- interested in universals and regularities, less interested in historical particulars
- zoom out of individual events to consider categories of events
- use of mathematic models, theories, and laws of nature
- they want to establish universal laws
3
Q
What are humanities?
A
- focus on the study of specific topics, themes, and subjects (specialisation)
- mistrust of generalisation and idealisation (little/no use for scientific laws)
focus on:
- historical human actors (meaning and experience)
- acts that carry out intentions and significance
- texts, artworks, and artefacts that carry out meaning (e.g. symbols)
- cultures
- historical particularity (every event is unique and needs to be studied in its own context and identification periods, but they zoom in in these categories)
The main output is interpretation (of acts, texts, or artworks) that can be a part of a broader theoretical framework, but no generalisation.
Hermeneutics: empathy, understand in the shoes of the other (historical)
4
Q
What are examples of natural sciences?
A
- physics
- chemistry
- biology
- astronomy
5
Q
What are examples of social sciences?
A
- sociology
- political science
- economics
- psychology
- anthropology
6
Q
What are examples of humanities?
A
- history
- history of art
- linguistics
- literary studies
- philosophy
- religious studies
7
Q
What is the nomothetic approach?
A
- generalisations, development of laws, explanations from general rules and patterns
- used to: identify regularities, formulate laws and generalisations to describe the regularities, derive explanations of observed outcomes from these generalisations and laws
8
Q
What is the idiographic approach?
A
- specify/highlight unique elements of different individual phenomena
- understand the meaning of contingent, unique and often subjective outcomes
9
Q
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the nomothetic approach?
A
Strengths:
- identify similarities and structures that underlie apparently diverse cases
- yield sweeping, general knowledge
- yield economical knowledge
Weaknesses:
- ignore the specificity of outcomes
- can be reductive, mechanistic, positivistic
10
Q
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the idiographic approach?
A
Strengths:
- reveal differences between apparently similar cases
- yield detailed, context-sensitive knowledge
Weakness:
- blind to general factors that constrain outcomes
11
Q
What are social sciences?
A
Contains:
- human agents and institutions
- forms of behaviour
- rationality and rituals
- cultures
