Constructing Knowledge

1. Constructing Knowledge The interaction of science and societies Dr. Kristi WintersLeibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften

2. Overview • Human search for knowledge • Ancient view of the world • People who changed everything • New insights change how we view ourselves • Change and its knock on effects • After The Enlightenment • Science and society • Producing facts • The role of meaning • The social construction of reality

3. The human search for knowledge • As conscious beings, the role of cause and effect shapes our experiences. It allows people to make connections between how things are, how things were before and what connects the two. • Understanding cause and effect correctly improves your chances of success. • In their attempts to understand the world, ancient people made up stories to account for things they saw in the world or in the sky. • Creation stories across the world include supernatural agents whose actions set things in motion that result in the world being the way it is. • 6000 years ago the size of the universe was very small.

4. Ancient view of the world • Genesis 1:14 • And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years…’ • Egg comparison

5. People who changed everything • Greek thought transformed the world. • An idea took hold in Greek society: use natural phenomena to understand other natural phenomena. • Herodotus was the first historian to collect his materials systematically, Euclid the ‚father of geometry‘. • What made geometry different from attempts to explain the world that had gone before? • Certainty derived fromproofs. • Things could be known to be true – special category ofknowledge. • Line between traditions and myths and ideas that can be explained, tested and used by others to arrive at the exact same result.

6. New insights change how we view ourselves • Applied these ideas to the natural world produced a special and unique knowledge. • Hipparchus (2nd century BCE) Under-estimated the distance to the Sun, Aristarchus (3rd century BCE) our first known model with the Sun at the center and the Earth revolving around it. • Its legitimacy was not based on religious myth or cultural tradition, could be challenged. • Egg ‘model’ changes to one with spatial distances and objects. • Think how different things changed the day after the Brexit vote. What had changed? Nothing and everything. Now imagine the impact of realizing you understood the universe incorrectly. • Direct challenge to the human ego. Putting the sun at the center of things instead of the Earth demotes the importance of humans to the universe.

7. Centuries without progress and then… • Without a way to test their ideas, several models existed: geocentric model, Pythagorean system, heliocentric (minority opinion). • Educated Catholics until Galileo relied on the geocentric model: mirrored their beliefs that everything in the universe was made for humans. • What changed? Technology. With the telescope (1600) Galileo observed dark "spots" on the moon. The moon was not a perfect celestial body in contrast to religious teachings. • Kepler refuted church’s preference for circles in astronomy to show planets move in ellipses. • Observations alter human perception of our place in the universe. • Empirical evidence starts to override tradition as knowledge.

8. Knock on effects • Long heldbeliefsabouttheuniverseandhumans‘ place in itwerebeingundermined. • Technology plus mathematicalmodelstestedagainstobservationshadthe power toreplaceauthorityandtradition. • Tabula rasa by Locke. • He argued against Augustine and Descartes that man (sic) innately knows basic logical propositions. • Proposed we are blank slates (tabula rasa) and all our ideas come from sensations and reflections. • Religious views changed: Deism developed, the view that god created the universe but, like a watchmaker, set it in motion and then step away.

9. After The Enlightenment • Backed by technology some men challenged the empirical assertions based on religious beliefs and religious power – knowledge was not the exclusive property of the Church. • The knownuniversebecamebiggerwhile human centralitydiminished. • Emphasis on materiality, observation, experimentation and replication replaced claims based on innate knowledge. • Over time peoplelooked to scientists for answersinstead of religious leaders. People couldwitness experiments themselves or do calculations themselves to become convinced of a proposition. • Development ofthetheoryofevolutiondowngradedhumansfrombeing hand-craftedbythedivinetobeing a memberofthehominidtaxonomic family of primates 

10. Science and society • Driven by the results of their inquiries, scientists showed others a different way to see the world, why it is the way it is and humans‘ place in it. • Humans organize our experiences and understanding through language. • The scientific process is an example of onesystem of organization. • Community with entrance requirements, standards are set, values are shared and practices and norms are agreed upon. • Facts (and knowledge) produced is not definitive for all time. • Facts can and have been changed after discoveries or new observations.

11. Producing facts • What is the answer to the question ‚how many planets are there in our solar system?‘ • Over time the answers to how many planets there are in our solar system has changed due to • Technology • The criteria humans set • The number of objects in our solar system hasn‘t changed • What changed what was scientists decided on the characteristics of an object called ‚a planet‘. • Efforts to make the world understandable goes beyond the natural world to the social world.

12. Importance of meaning • Social sciences use empirically driven methods to understand individuals and society. • Aims to observe, describe and understand what people do, think and say. • How to conceptualize, observe, measure, and/or understand them. • Natural science approach – mainly deductive, theory testing • Qualitiative approach – inductive, theory generting • Not enough to observe behaviour and describe it. To understand it we try to understand motivations, beliefs, values, and attitudes. • Measuring hunger quantitatively

13. The social construction of reality • Important points to remember • Mind-independent reality • Human perceive our reality in similar (systematic) ways • Our perception of reality is not the totality or reality – Kant‘snoumenal vs phenomenal worlds • When we systematize the words and concepts we use, we can construct a means to interpret and describe our reality. • Applied to the natural world our methods have been incredibly successful • Methods can also be applied to humans and human interactions but require an additional layer of analysis – human motivations, attitudes, etc. • Knowledge fed back into the social world can change people‘s understanding of themselves, the world, and other people. • Those changes are (most often) steps forward in our progress.

14. A fewofthesourcesconsulted • Why Do We Anthropomorphize? By Rick Nauert PhD • https://psychcentral.com/news/2010/03/01/why-do-we-anthropomorphize/11766.html • Herodotus • https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/herodotus • The History of the Size of the Universe • https://prezi.com/featcc0afyaq/the-history-of-the-size-of-the-universe/ • Blackwell, Richard (1991). Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. p. 25. ISBN0268010242. • INNATE KNOWLEDGE • http://www.embracedbytruth.com/Man/Crown%20of%20Creation/Innate%20Knowledge.htm • Science: A History 1543 - 200 • https://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-History-1543-John-Gribbin/dp/0140297413