Science, Technology, Empiricism, and Rationalism

Science and Technology

Science: This type of knowledge is the most important that human beings produce, if one takes into account the enormous influence it has on all areas of knowledge and on many fields of life.

Technology: This is a vast field of research, design, and creation that uses scientific knowledge in order to control things or natural processes.

Empiricism

It emerged in the eighteenth century in England and was represented by its maximum exponent, D. Hume.

Empiricism is a theory of knowledge which believes that we can only understand reality through the physical senses or perception of things. We could even say that it is a theory contrary to rationalism.

There are two types of knowledge:

• Simple
• Compound

Impressions: Vivid perceptions of physical objects that surround us.

Ideas: Weak copies of impressions.

Rationalism

Rationalism is a school of thought, a philosophical attitude that believes that the only way to discover the truth is through reason, because the senses are inadequate and may even be misleading. Ideally, this doctrine was to make philosophy into an exact science like mathematics. It defends innate and a priori knowledge and evidence as a unique criterion for true knowledge. It is opposed to empiricism and blind belief in authority. Some followers of Scholasticism used it as a pejorative term to refer to those thinkers who tried—unsuccessfully—to reach the truth only with reason. It was Descartes who proposed it.

The Problem of Demarcation

Since the birth of modern science, as a result of the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all sorts of ideologies and doctrines have tried to qualify as science. This is due to the continuous achievements that science has made in the last four centuries, which have given it great prestige and have made it the kind of objective, rational, critical, and verifiable knowledge.

The prestige and the great achievements of modern science have meant that the word 'scientific' is also used to refer to all kinds of speeches, human activities, and products with the sole aim of making them appear respectable. Therefore, it is not uncommon to hear of scientific astrology, scientific ideology, scientific religions, or occult sciences. Therefore, a goal that philosophers of science should raise is to find a criterion or a set of distinct characteristics that allow us to distinguish science from other discourses, practices, and non-scientific knowledge. It is about being able to define what is scientific from what is not, even if it intends to be.