Tell me how youre conducting your search and Ill tell you what youre looking for." To what extent do the methods used in different Areas of Knowledge determine the scope of the research and the conclusions you can reach?

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Andrew Benton

“Tell me how you’re conducting your search and I’ll tell you what you’re looking for." To what extent do the methods used in different Areas of Knowledge determine the scope of the research and the conclusions you can reach?

        Methods used to draw conclusions about evidence to prove hypotheses vary greatly throughout the many areas of knowledge there are. The different areas of knowledge include the natural sciences, the social sciences, mathematics, ethics, the arts and history. In each area of knowledge there are methods that may differ but may also be similar, however some methods are more reliable than others. To find knowledge we use the ways of knowing such as perception, language, reason and emotion. These ways of knowing are used throughout the areas of knowledge but some limit the reliability of the conclusions of knowledge due to either a lack in evidence, a lack in the amount of perspectives on an event, or just too many uncontrollable variables. The extent to which the methods are good or bad solely relies on what research and hypotheses someone has; it is not the method of knowledge that limits the research, but the evidence, results and facts on which the method is based.

        Arguably one of the most certain areas of knowledge due to its application to everyday events is mathematics. All theorems in mathematics are based and relate to the original axioms which were arguably ‘invented’. Math’s is seen to be so accurate because of how reliable it is, and because its limited answers to questions. For example 2+2=4. Someone may make a mistake in the calculation and get the wrong answer, but the answer is never different when different people do it. There’s little human error because the human has little room for making mistakes. The mathematical method goes like this; we start off with axioms, from these mathematicians use logic to work out problems in which theorems can be made. However when doing this we humans have to realize that we are not perfect and that the axioms that we invented could actually be not truthful, which would result in the ‘garbage-in, garbage-out’ scenario where because of the original axiom being false, all theorems based on this will also be false. ¹“The truth of a theorem depends on the truth of the axioms, but axioms cannot be true or false.” But the method to come up with theorems from axioms comes from the creativity and imagination of the human mind. Kurt Gödel proved that mathematics didn’t work on a world scale basis and said that ²“there will always be mathematical theorems that are true, but which cannot be proven right or wrong from the axioms” no matter how creative or clever we are. Despite mathematics being one of the more reliable approaches to knowledge it has its faculties, which leads us to suggest that the search for certain knowledge of the world is further from humans than we thought, as math’s used in nearly every other area of knowledge and if it’s inaccurate or has faculties then so do most other areas of knowledge; humans make mistakes; we may think we’re right but we could be wrong. ³“Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”

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        A less accurate means of knowing is the social sciences. The reason they are less accurate and reliable than math’s because when conducting a search for results there are various variables that are uncontrollable. This results in inaccuracy towards the conclusions. They try to understand humans’ actions, which is extremely hard because humans’ reactions are based upon emotions, values and feelings which are hard to measure and give values to and are very unpredictable. There are many biases in the results of social sciences, but also in the methods in which it conducts its search. For example if questionnaires were ...

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