“Areas of knowledge are most useful in combination with each other.

” Discuss this claim

with reference to two areas of knowledge.

The production of knowledge involves a variety of areas that intersect and

overlap in ways that support and develop each other. It can be argued that knowledge is

at its most effective when supported by a variety of different areas of knowledge. When

acquiring knowledge, each area of knowledge allows access to a certain perspective on

a given subject. It can also be argued that when acquiring knowledge on a given

subject, using multiple areas of knowledge alters perspectives and thus allows for

knowledge to be acquired in different ways than if only a single one were used through

the use of compounding and filtering. This idea raises the question: Are areas of

knowledge most useful in combination with each other?

In order to properly evaluate this knowledge question, the limitations of any

single area of knowledge must be defined. All areas of knowledge involve the use of

different mechanisms to allow for the acquisition of knowledge. These mechanisms are

each unique and offer different perspectives on a subject. These perspectives can be

defined as ways in which information is understood, therefore they also limit what and

how we understand things when viewing from that perspective. Because each area of

knowledge corresponds to a unique perspective, they all offer unique limitations to each

area of knowledge when taken by themselves. This is not to say that the limits offered

by any given perspective are absolute however as this would imply that using areas of

knowledge would limit each other. In fact, these perspectives can be used in

conjunction, changing a perspective and in doing so changing what knowledge is able

to be acquired and how it’s acquisition is limited.

 The natural sciences are an area of knowledge that encompass the study of the

natural world, through the disciplines of biology, chemistry, and physics, primarily. They

allow for knowledge to be obtained on the underlying structures of the world. When

obtaining new knowledge using the natural sciences, it is necessary that experimental

data is used in order to maximise the objectivity of the knowledge which is being

acquired. All margins for error must be quantified and accounted for in order to draw

any meaningful conclusions from the data acquired. I have personally experienced this

in my HL chemistry class, in which we have done multiple laboratory experiments. In

these experiments it is always necessary to calculate the numerical uncertainty of every

value acquired, along with the percent error. This example highlights how natural

science utilizes a perspective that is extremely reliant on objective truth in order to

acquire effective knowledge. This perspective is limiting in a sense but allows for

extremely precise and accurate knowledge to be acquired as it can be applied to

objective uses. Reason is a way of knowing applied in this instance, in which a knower

perceives the world and then uses logic in order to draw conclusions that go beyond

what has been perceived. In this example reason is necessary to natural sciences as it

allows for uncertainty to be quantified allowing myself to review my knowledge acquired

along with processing my data into useful information.

This perspective uses objectivity and reason and can be applied to a variety of

other fields in order to expand and predict the insights that they are able to make by
using the tools offered by natural science. Anthropologists studying human behaviour

are able to predict and explain socio cultural practices among different groups of people

by using experimental data obtained surrounding environmental science, and

evolutionary biology using these to examine how the evolutionary past of humans

affected the formation of societal structures via reasoning. In this example we can see

the mechanisms of compounding and filtering being used; the perspectives of natural

science and human science are compounded allowing knowledge to be gained through

their combination, while unhelpful portions of a given area of knowledge such as natural

sciences reliance on total objectivity is filtered out. This illustrates how using the

perspectives of different areas of knowledge allows for greater insight into knowledge

obtained to be accessed and made use of. In this case, using human science as the

sole area of knowledge would have been limiting but by applying the natural sciences to

the human sciences, more knowledge was able to be obtained than would previously be

possible. Furthermore, the argument can be made that in applying the knowledge

gained via natural science in order to alter the perspective and thus broaden the

knowledge able to be gained by a researcher, that same knowledge that was applied

has become more valuable and thus more useful.

A counterclaim to the argument that areas of knowledge are most useful when

used in conjunction with one another is that while the perspective and the range of

knowledge that is possible to be obtained is broadened, the actual depth of the

knowledge is limited. For example, when studying primates, Jane Goodall applied

perspectives of human science to her study of primates which broadened her

perspectives and the knowledge she was able to obtain, however, in humanizing and

interacting with primates, she altered the system. As a result of her interactions the

behaviour of the chimpanzees was altered. Therefore, while she was able to gain

important insight into chimps, the objectivity of her insights were limited and thus the

depth of the possible knowledge obtained is also limited, making it less useful.

Human science can be defined as the study of human behaviour and interactions

how it is affected in the world around us through fields such as psychology, sociology,

political science, and economics. When obtaining new knowledge using the human

sciences, it is necessary to observe patterns in behaviour from which conclusions can

be drawn from. These patterns are extremely difficult to quantify and as a result, this

perspective is able to draw meaningful knowledge from a wide variety of sources.

Instead of quantifying all uncertainty, it is simply necessary to account for bias and

continue to draw conclusions under. An example of this would be my historical

investigation done for my history IA. In this investigation I examined documents and

historical papers which detailed international relations of the south african government

during the mid 20th century along with the practices of the canadian government in

order to state that the Apartheid government was influenced heavily by canadian

indigenous policy. Despite the fact that I was unable to find any documents that directly

proved my argument, I was still able to make a legitimate claim that was supported by

the information I had without being as objective and unbiased as conceivably possible.

This example serves to illustrate how the human sciences offer a perspective that

allows for knowledge to be gained and postulated under conditions where objectivity is
impossible. Furthermore, as shown by the example of Jane Goodall, the use of human

science allows for advancements that would otherwise be impossible once bias and a

lack of total objectivity are accounted for. Once again, we can see the mechanisms of

compounding and filtering in the example of Goodall in which the methods of human

science are compounded with her research in natural science, while limits such as the

natural sciences need for absolute objectivity are filtered out. Sense perception is a way

of knowing that is applied in this instance, as while it is impossible to make entirely

objective statements, this perspective allows for legitimate knowledge to be obtained

through simply making observations and discussing what their implications are.

Another counterclaim to this argument is that the usefulness of a given

perspective offered by an area of knowledge varies depending on the topic of research

that it is being applied to. For example, in 1905 Albert Einstein would publish a paper

that would detail for the first time special relativity. While Einstein was also known as a

philosopher, this did not play a role in his discovery of special relativity. This is because

in this case, the perspective offered by human science was not useful in the purely

scientific research done by Einstein. Thus the usefulness of different areas of

knowledge vary depending on a subject and as a result, do not increase the usefulness

of other areas of knowledge when used together. Furthermore, it could be argued that

attempting to apply a perspective offered by an area of knowledge that is not useful in a

given context hinders the process of obtaining knowledge, thus making the area of

knowledge less useful in combination with other areas of knowledge.

 In conclusion, the use of multiple areas of knowledge increases the breadth of

the knowledge that is able to be obtained and therefore makes them more useful when

used in conjunction. Each area of knowledge provides a unique perspective through

which the creation of knowledge is done, and each perspective allows for certain

knowledge to be obtained while limiting other knowledge from being obtained. Using

these perspectives in conjunction allows for limitations to be changed, thus increasing

the usefulness of a given area of knowledge through the mechanisms of compounding

and filtering. However, as outlined by the second counterclaim, depending on the field of

research, the perspective offered by an area of knowledge can have limited usefulness.

Word count: 1558

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