In medicine, knowledge needs to be reliable, but there is a special problem which makes the reliable study of medical treatments especially difficult. Science and common sense interconnect, scientific knowledge informs common sense. Although, the two can be seen as having distinctive characteristics.
"Table 1.1 show" common sense and scientific medical knowledge compared and contrasted.
Table 1.1
Medical science, like social science, has it's own specialist language. However there are significant differences in the methodical approaches and the assumptions about how knowledge is produced between the social sciences and the natural sciences. Scientific method includes, observation and experimentation to produce knowledge about the material world to gain control over the world. The age of enlightenment or the age of Reason is an intellectual movement through the 17th and 18th centuries. Knowledge should be accepted through reason only not through tradition or religion. In our country Kuwait, in the past we went to the "Mullah" or religions man for treatment, but now, after advanced technology we go to hospitals or clinics, in the contemporary era there are many main sources of knowledge if we need anything go to them.
Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) depended on the method of induction arriving at are liable conclusion by collecting data and repeating experiments. In 1930s Karl Popper developed a new scientific method that depended on skepticism and continual questioning. Popper argued that scientists had to construct experiments that falsify rather than prove their hypothesis – adopting open, skeptical and imaginative approaches to science rather than a description of what they do. Comparing effects of certain remedies would be more successful. Science is interconnected with social change.
Kuhn view of science as implicating the society in which it is embedded can be seen as complementing a social, constructionist approach to knowledge. Kuhn, believe that science is not about discovering knowledge but producing knowledge. Foucault challenges the notion that knowledge is discovered, he argues that it is produced through the language and practice that are involved in making it meaningful. He argues that 'the body is directly involved in a political field: power relation has an immediate hold over it'. He does not deny the experience of the physical body but he claims that conditions of the body are produced through medical and scientific discourse produced through medical and scientific discourse, member of army engaged in a war usually know that their cause is 'right' and that of the enemy is 'wrong'.
For Foucault power and knowledge are inextricably linked (Allen, 2000). Yet, Foucault is analysis over emphasizes the social and cultural at the expense of the natural and body, it more useful to reconsider the relationship between nature and culture and see how they interrelated and his view don't help to locate the source of power in the production of knowledge. On the other hand, Keller argues that modern science's claims to objectivity and the independence of the scientific observer obscures it's specially gendered nature. The production of knowledge is gendered; women were not permitted to practice medicine. They were excluded from other areas of public life, from higher education. Table 1.2 different theorists' approaches to knowledge.
Table 1.2
There are different forms of knowledge and that some knowledge systems might be privileged in particular societies, while scientific knowledge can be seen as replacing religious knowledge, there is no evidence that, for instance, near knowledge systems are challenging the orthodoxy of traditional medical science, especially in its application though the practice of medicine, people are seeking alternative ways of knowing about health and illness, who are the experts now. Is there greater uncertainty about scientific forms of knowledge in the contemporary world? At different points in history there have been different ideas about the source of authority. In recent year, media play important role in publishing new forms of knowledge and in re-constructing orthodoxies, for example, "SIDS". There are different forms of knowledge, social, cultural and medical know ledges complete and sometimes complement each other; they are also tangled in knowledge.
There is similarity between science and medicine they are both practices. Medicine is called practice because it is what physicians and doctors do professionally as living. This structure to the medical profession, as profession and as a practice, with moral rules bound into that practice, was first laid out in the west in the Hippocratic Oath.
Authority strengths a theory and compensate for pore evidence. Cultural factors play an important role in deciding which theories are accepted. Common sense knowledge maybe ignored until it has a scientific basis. Science and medicine are both practices, medicine can be seen as a craft and a practice while science uses its theories, observations, and experiments to create further knowledge about the world. Science and medicine include a body of knowledge methods and skills that have to be learned knowledge and power.
Knowledge in science develops through periods of stability interspersed with revolution. And for most of science, a certain amount of diversity is not a problem the single foram of the Royal Society accepted everything from Newton's laws of motion of stones report on the affect of willow bark on fever. Indeed, if the history of medical knowledge tells us anything, it is that a lack of diversity is more likely to lead to science becoming a series of revolutions. Today, with the acceptance of complementary rather than alternative medicine, there is a diversity of system of medical knowledge available.
In addition, scientific knowledge is not opposed to social science or to common sense knowledge, but is interrelated. Science began as a new method to rationalize and prove knowledge – much of it common – sense knowledge. With an apparent objectivity. However, scientists are members of a society, and the society in which they live shapes and constrains the scientific knowledge they produce. Science is not separate from society, but a part of it. Also, knowledge is shaped by social institution and by the power groups and individuals to influence the generation and acceptance of knowledge such as legal system, and education system.
In the other hand religion is a special case of authority over knowledge because it exists as much often as individual to wards the right way to perceive reality. Religions knowledge a particular kind of knowledge, based on truths revealed rather than discovered through empirical investigation.
Opinion differs about how scientific knowledge relate to religious knowledge. Knowledge of natural science is produced in different way from religious knowledge which is seen to be revealed through spiritual experience or a surced text, rather than as of investigation.
In tradition of Islam, it is accepted that any debate takes forms of discussion of how faith – knowledge, as set out in the Holy Qura'n or the Hadith, provides understanding of questions of contemporary living.
Western social scientist studies relation between their form of knowledge and religions knowledge, sometimes religion was even opposed to science and progress. Social scientist are more concerned with how religions knowledge is produced and affect people's lives than they are with questions of the inherent truth or falsity of be belief.
The development of a 'scientific' method of inquiry began in the age of Enlighten. This approach was increasingly influential in many parts of world. The dualism of science and faith become a feature of the modern – world society. Knowledge is socially constructed perhaps on the basis of faith – teaching or in terms of what scientist call 'first principles'.
The scientific method aims to maintain the impartiality of the inquirer in both the identification of evidence and its assessment; this can be show in the 'circuit of knowledge'. (It begin with questions then claim, evidence and finally with evolution). Most social scientists would claim either to endeavor to minimize the influence of value on their work, or to be explicit about the values which underpin their thinking.
There are two types of evidence which social scientist use: quantitative and qualitative. Whether derived from quantitative or qualitative inquiry, a fundamental change in information gathering is resulting from the growth now a day of information and communication technologies (ICTS). Social scientist recognize the need for methodological procedures in their quest for knowledge and understanding in order to demonstrate that their fining are as free from bias, as comprehensive and as 'realistic' as possible. Discussing research methodologies the principles which lie behind research design, these methods are the means of gathering data about society, the tools with which social scientist do their work. There are four methologies of social research: positivist, interpretive, critical and cultural. First positive perspective, claims that social interaction and analysis quantitative data inform of statistics. Social knowledge is only scientific only valid and reliable, if produced by a scientific method 'experiment and observation'. They assume that social that cause and effect are identified by quantitative data and analyzing it.
Second, interpretive perspective, this perspective is opposite to the positivist, the interpretivists think that quantifying action is limited in understanding meaning. Using the qualitative way, they explore how people make sense of their life and experience. They focus on meanings people construct in their social interaction. They explore the social by examining actor's definitions and interpretations by using interviews. A third perspective is critical perspective, the best known example are the Frankfurt school "The Marxists" and "the feminists". They focus on the research context the power relation and structural inequalities in society. They see research as linked to struggle against oppression of workers by controllers of capital. The use same methods as positivist and interprettivists, but deploy these to contribute to the emancipation of the oppressed or to understand some form of exploitation. critical researchers raise questions about the impact of prevailing power structures on the research process and findings. Finally, is cultural perspective, they focus on language, representative and discourse. Knowledge is linked with power. Cultural approaches make two representational practice and language and how we understand and make sense of the world. The notion of discourse and the links between knowledge and power.
Social science is complex science, search for reliable, try to use best means to reach for the right and truth, gave their opinion without any intervention or biases, they take their information from many resources such as narrative stand and analytical stand, the analytical stand uses the circuit of knowledge to examine the process by which we come to say that we know something. The narrative stand explores the nature of knowledge itself and how it is not constant but forever changing.
In my opinion this approach is excellent and powerful, help in many fields of our life to solve complex problem, or help when the person want to write article, because it's analytical method, help to reach to what we need to understand. Social science helps and makes the ways easy to study the other parts of science.
References:
- Tutor, summary: - Mona Kurtum.
- Chapter 1 and 2 in knowledge and social science.
- Chapter 1 in workbook 5 and AC7 (sides A and B) "DD122".
- Durkhemeim, E (1895/ 1968) the Rules of Sociological Method, London, Free Press.
- Briergew G (1993) 'The historiography of medicine, in Bynum WG and porter, R. (eds) Companation Eacyclopaedia of the History of Medicine, London, Routledge (PP.24-44).
