Ways of knowing

How do we know things?Experience

Authority

Belief

Intuition

Science

Traditional Ecological Knowledge TEK

Reasoning

Plus more??

Perception

The world is round but we perceive it as flat.The earth rotates but we perceive the sun rising and

setting.

Our perception can be very different from reality- think of magicians

Oral Culture

Written culture

Language

• Relationship between “things” and words.

Me’en Tribe of Ethiopia

Picture recognition

9

Hieroglyphics

Cuniform writing - simplified about 1000 pictographs to 400 synpols

Alphabet:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

GreekGreek philosophers – deduction

Explained natural phenomena by observing nature.

Separation of mind from body

this led to a symbolic and abstract language

I control my body

I grow vegetables

I can manage nature

I has become a bodiless psyche

World View

• A framework for explaining our place and role in nature.

• Animism

• Greek philosophy

• Judeo-Christian

J-C worldview

• Answers to questions sought from people or texts of authority (sound familiar?)

• By 1300’s Greek philosophy slowly filtered to the ‘west’translated from Greek to Arabic to Latin

• Gutenberg 1397-1468• Black Death• Universities and Museums

• Turning point came in 1543

• Publication of Archimedes• Publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium

Coelestrium by Copernicus• Publication of De Humani Corporis

Fabrica by Vasalius

16

Mechanical World View

• Started in mid 1600’s

• Francis Bacon – Novum Organum 1620

• liberate from the natural world

• objective knowledge

• HOW not WHY

• René Descartes (1596-1650) - mathematics- "Cogito ergo sum" “I think, therefore I am”

• Isaac Newton (1642-1727)mechanical motion, gravity

• Science was born - the only way to know!

Politics and Economics

• John Locke (1632-1704)social role of the state was to promote the subjugation of nature, trickle down theory

• Adam Smith (1723-1790)economist “Wealth of Nations”, the Invisible Hand

• Our present day economic system was born

• economic system and science

Mechanical world viewMachine Analogy.Machine Analogy.

Parts make up wholes; understand the parts Parts make up wholes; understand the parts and we can understand the whole. and we can understand the whole.

This is called Reductionism.This is called Reductionism.Separation of humans from the rest of Separation of humans from the rest of

nature.nature.We can manage the machine.We can manage the machine.

What is Science?

Sir Francis Bacon1561-1626

• Western science• Philosophical system for investigating nature• Did not like deductive reasoning

- accept something as true and then deduce a consequence

• We see what we believe rather than believe what we see.

• Stressed induction – observation (data) and experimentation

Science?

• A way of knowing• Based on repeatability• Based on coming up with the most plausible

answer from a suite of possible answers.• “This is the most accurate statement that

can be made with the evidence at hand”• A process of going from singular

propositions to general propositions.

Theory

Law

Rule

Model

Hypothesis

Auxiliary Hypothesis

Ad hoc Hypothesis

Working Hypothesis

FactSingular proposition

General Proposition

Testing hypotheses

• How many ways can two things be identical?

• How many ways can two things be different?

Justificationism

Falsificationism

The Process of Science

• Observation – induction • Question – Hypothesis • Logic – if ... then...• Statistical hypothesis – H0 (no difference between

observed and expected) and H1 (observed and expected are different)

• Experiment – • Result – reject or accept hypothesis• alternative hypotheses

• Remember proof in science is impossible