This is very much a work in progress. All of these definitions are provisional and will be worked on and improved during the writing of the book. Feedback on the definitions would be especially welcome.
Knowledge
The study of the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Philosophers call the study of how we acquire knowledge, epistemology. There are many aspects, many parts from which an understanding can be based, and thus many differing beliefs about what is or is not knowledge and how it may be acquired.
- Physical
- We gain practical knowledge about the physical, material world by means of our physical senses and body.
- Mental
- We gain knowledge about what these things are, their universal properties, their ousia, their thinghood by means of our mind.
- Reality
- We gain knowledge of reality when we combine percept and concept. [The details of this are quite fuzzy for me at present – see Steiner’s Truth and Science and Philosophy of Freedom for more details.]
- Percept …
- Concept …
- Object and subject;
- The words object and subject, in philosophy and science, through the passage of history have both completely changed their meanings. In Ancient Greek and Medieval times a subject was a thing-in-itself; that which underlies its physical appearance. This is close to one of its many present day meanings; ‘a person or thing that is being discussed, described… [or observed]’, i.e. the subject of a lesson. Aristotle stated that an object was the appearance of a thing, as perceived by a sentient being. This is close to its present day meaning as a goal or purpose; the object of a study belongs to the mind of the scientist, whereas the subject of a study is (at least initially) external to the scientist. Aristotle showed how true knowledge can be attained by an observer only when the perceived object (a mental picture) becomes one with the subject of one’s observations. (see Science, Goethean). Starting initially with Descartes, and unequivocally with Kant, the only knowable subject was considered to be the ‘I’ reflecting on itself (cogito ergo sum). Objects were knowable for they were the properties of the perceiving ‘I’. Therefore academic, physical science (physics) considered itself exclusively dependant on objects for its study. Thus was born objective science, and the modern dogma of the scientific method—objectivity—was born. See Sachs (2002: pp. xxix–xxx).
- Objectivity
- A key factor of mainstream, academic science since the mid-nineteenth century, but a controversial one. In modern academic science and philosophy it has come to mean an idealised elimination of all human judgement and personal bias from the production of scientific ‘facts’. Daston et al (1992) http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-4.2/burnett.html
- Subjectivity
- Worldview
- Holism is the belief that everything consists of linked parts (elements) and wholes.
- Idealism is the philosophical belief that Ideas exist independently of our minds.
- Naturalism… https://www.thinkingchristian.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/schafersman_nat.html
References for this Section
- Ziguras, Jakob (2011) Aristotle’s Rational Empiricism: A Goethean Interpretation of Aristotle’s Theory of Knowledge, PhD Diss., The University of Sydney.
Rethinking the Nature of Substance 