But in natural sciences, the knowledge we get is objective and more statistical, and it does not hinder with anyone’s culture, people from different cultural background would all agree to the same analysis, they would all collect the same data. For example, I did a chemistry experiment on acids and bases, and I compared my results to a friend who did the same thing in the UK, and the findings and results are quite similar, they don’t change due to the cultural background between us.
Art can be argued both ways. Sometimes art reflects culture, for example in renaissance paintings, they reflect the culture and lifestyle of that period of time, however, it could be separated from culture if we are talking about abstraction paintings, they can be totally irrelevant of culture.
If we look into literature, which is a branch of art specifically, both the author and reader has to have culture involved in it, literature in many ways reflects the culture, but more importantly, the interpretation and understanding of the work usually bases on the personal cultural experience and in hinders our way of looking at the literature. However, a counterargument for this is in science fiction novels, they can be non-related to culture at all. Yet, we cannot deny the importance here, in terms of language, in literature, the words translates the idea from the author, these words are from the language, which is simply derived from culture, this not only fits with literature, but also other areas of knowledge, in order to communicate our ideas, we have to use language, therefore making knowledge more dependent on culture.
However, Mathematics is a topic which doesn’t really require culture as a basis, it does not require language from culture because it is more about logic and the abstract concepts, and it is actually the same all around the world, it is universal. Although mathematics is a very extreme case where culture doesn’t really get involved, however we must consider the idea of ethnomathematics, said to be “The mathematics of cultural practice”
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To conclude the points I mentioned, I think it is totally possible to have knowledges and beliefs which are independent of our culture, however, they are somehow linked back into culture after all, therefore I think culture is quite an important and essential element in terms of knowledge.
by
carsonwat (student)
