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Sources of Knowledge

The major sources of knowledge are experience, authority, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and the scientific approach. Experience provides knowledge through direct observation, but different people may interpret the same experience differently. Authority is knowledge from experts, but authorities can be wrong or disagree. Deductive reasoning uses logic to draw conclusions from general statements, but cannot prove universal truths. Inductive reasoning draws conclusions from specific observations, but observations are never complete. The scientific approach uses hypotheses to systematically test relationships between variables through observation.

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Mehran Asim
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27 views

Sources of Knowledge

The major sources of knowledge are experience, authority, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and the scientific approach. Experience provides knowledge through direct observation, but different people may interpret the same experience differently. Authority is knowledge from experts, but authorities can be wrong or disagree. Deductive reasoning uses logic to draw conclusions from general statements, but cannot prove universal truths. Inductive reasoning draws conclusions from specific observations, but observations are never complete. The scientific approach uses hypotheses to systematically test relationships between variables through observation.

Uploaded by

Mehran Asim
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Sources of knowledge

• The major sources of knowledge can be


categorized under five headings:
• (1) experience
• (2) authority,
• (3) deductive reasoning
• (4) inductive reasoning
• (5) the scientific approach.
Experience
Experience is a familiar and well-used source of knowledge.
. By personal experience, you can find the answers to many of the
questions you face.
• Much wisdom passed from generation to generation is the result of
experience
• In fact, this ability to learn from experience is a prime characteristic
of intelligent behavior.
Limitations
Experience has limitations as a source of knowledge. Two people will
have very different experiences in the same situation.
Example:Two supervisors observing the same classroom at the same
time could truthfully compile very different reports if one focused on
and reported the things that went right and the other focused on and
reported the things that went wrong.
Authority
• For things difficult or impossible to know by
personal experience, people frequently turn
to an authority; that is, they seek knowledge
from someone who has had experience with
the problem or has some other source of
expertise. People accept as truth the word of
recognized authorities.
Examples
• We go to a physician with health questions or to
a stockbroker with questions about investments.
• A student can look up the accepted
pronunciation of a word in a dictionary
• A beginning teacher asks an experienced one for
suggestions and may try a certain technique for
teaching reading because the teacher with
experience suggests that it is effective.
Short comings
• First, authorities can be wrong. People often
claim to be experts in a field when they do not
really have the knowledge to back up the
claim.
• Second, you may find that authorities
disagree among themselves on issues,
indicating that their authoritative statements
are often more personal opinion than fact.
DEDUCTIVE REASONING
• A thinking process in which one proceeds from
general to specific knowledge through logical
argument.
• Example
• For example, “All men are mortal”
• “The king is a man”
• “Therefore, the king is mortal” (conclusion).
Limitations
you cannot conduct scientific inquiry through
deductive reasoning alone because it is
difficult to establish the universal truth of
many statements dealing with scientific
phenomena.
Deductive reasoning can organize what people
already know and can point out new
relationships as you proceed from the general
to the specified
INDUCTIVE REASONING
From specific to general
Deductive: Every mammal has lungs.
• All rabbits are mammals.
• Therefore, every rabbit has lungs.
Inductive: Every rabbit that has ever been
observed has lungs.
Therefore, every rabbit has lungs.
Limitation
• In the preceding example, to be absolutely
sure that every rabbit has lungs, the
investigator would have to have observations
on all rabbits currently alive, as well as all past
and future rabbits. Clearly, this is not feasible;
you generally must rely on imperfect induction
based on incomplete observation.
THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH
• In the 19th century, scholars began to integrate the most
important aspects of the inductive and deductive
methods into a new technique, namely the inductive –
deductive method, or the scientific approach.
• This approach differs from inductive reasoning in that it
uses hypothesis.
• A hypothesis is a statement describing relationships
among variables that is tentatively assumed to be true.
• It identifies observations to be made to investigate a
question.
• The use of hypotheses is the principal
difference between the scientific approach
and inductive reasoning.
• Innductive reasoning, you make observations
first and then organize the information gained.
• In the scientific approach, you reason what
you would find if a hypothesis were true and
then you make systematic observations to
confirm (or fail to confirm) the hypothesis.
Thank You

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