Is the Knowledge We Gain from the Natural Sciences More Reliable Than the Knowledge We Gain from the Human Sciences
Is the knowledge we gain from the NATURAL SCIENCES more reliable than the knowledge we gain from the HUMAN SCIENCES?
When I first pondered over the question in class confidently my thoughts were natural sciences, of course, but before long I was left bewildered. I realized I had taken the reliability of all sciences for granted, who’s to say any one is more reliable than the other? What even makes something reliable? I strongly believe the reliability of knowledge soundly depends on the variety of WOK’s backing it, the more ways something can be proved through language, perception, reason and emotion the more reliable it would be. Hold your thumb up in the air to cover a distant object(a tree, a car, anything) and close one eye, all your sensory perceptions tell you your thumb is bigger than this object however when incorporating reason into this knowledge claim you know now there so no possible way your thumb could be bigger than a tree or car. However more questions than arise about the validity of the other WOK’s and whether any one is more important than others, whether the justifications behind them are reliable and whether the knowledge we gain from the natural sciences is really more reliable than the knowledge we gain from the human sciences.
As touched on above it is apparent that the knowledge we gain from the natural sciences is usually thought to be the more reliable and true as opposed to the human sciences. It uses logic and reason as its primary WOK’s which gain information through analyzing data and observing controlled experimental practices. But it could be argued that the natural sciences are no more reliable than the human sciences, really it has just as many problems. Observation is a large step in the method for obtaining information but such things as expectations, confirmation bias, expert seeing and background assumptions could all distort the ‘facts’ which are obtained in the end.
One knowledge issue with a natural science like
When I first pondered over the question in class confidently my thoughts were natural sciences, of course, but before long I was left bewildered. I realized I had taken the reliability of all sciences for granted, who’s to say any one is more reliable than the other? What even makes something reliable? I strongly believe the reliability of knowledge soundly depends on the variety of WOK’s backing it, the more ways something can be proved through language, perception, reason and emotion the more reliable it would be. Hold your thumb up in the air to cover a distant object(a tree, a car, anything) and close one eye, all your sensory perceptions tell you your thumb is bigger than this object however when incorporating reason into this knowledge claim you know now there so no possible way your thumb could be bigger than a tree or car. However more questions than arise about the validity of the other WOK’s and whether any one is more important than others, whether the justifications behind them are reliable and whether the knowledge we gain from the natural sciences is really more reliable than the knowledge we gain from the human sciences.
As touched on above it is apparent that the knowledge we gain from the natural sciences is usually thought to be the more reliable and true as opposed to the human sciences. It uses logic and reason as its primary WOK’s which gain information through analyzing data and observing controlled experimental practices. But it could be argued that the natural sciences are no more reliable than the human sciences, really it has just as many problems. Observation is a large step in the method for obtaining information but such things as expectations, confirmation bias, expert seeing and background assumptions could all distort the ‘facts’ which are obtained in the end.
One knowledge issue with a natural science like