Two Ways Of Knowing
Two Ways of Knowing:
Existential science, subjectivity emphasis, individual
The scientific method, objectivity emphasis, social
Of the two ways of knowing, one, the existential, may be termed primary. The formal, scientific and objective mode is secondary because it is actually a special case of the primary, existential mode. This can be clarified if we consider the practice of science from a philosophical and epistemological point of view. Each individual scientist considers the evidence of objectivity from within the same existential framework. Agreement with respect to objects is a social realization. So are the disputes, the controversies, and the procedures through which testing and checking occurs.
Primary knowledge is existential, subjective and individual. It is naturally centered around the unique parameters of the individual existence, including individual values and objectives.
Secondary knowledge is social, objective and formally scientific. Agreement about objects, or a consensus of knowing, permits a consensus of action that has social value. Repeatable experiments make it possible for shared knowledge to be turned into practical technologies and construction. Such efforts follow the social or political objectives that provide the organizing, cohesive energy of any enterprise.
If today the secondary form of knowledge seems to be primary, that is because many people are alienated from the ground of existence. They live superficially and without self-knowledge. To the superficial observer, the world seems like a vast pre-determined reality, against which the individual is naught.
But the human world is created through the subjective agency of thinkers, is subject to re-creation, and is re-created continually. The mature individual is a co-creator who participates in making the world what it is at any time.
Some have a bias toward objectivity, while others have a bias toward subjectivity, just as some are extroverts and others are introverts. Each orientation affords certain possibilities and dangers. Whichever way one is inclined, subjectivity and objectivity are intertwined in all human experience.
Subjectivity does not imply an inability to distinguish objects, or a failure to appreciate what we call objective values; it implies an emphasis on the subjective factor, because this is perceived as the key to what is really going on in the human sense.
The word "object" is related to the word "objective" suggesting purpose or intention. Why do we focus on a particular object?
In relation to the Manhattan Project, the study of atomic energy was not propelled by idle curiosity.
Relative to human creativity, the object is the result of human endeavor. Physicists focused on the "objectivity" of the atom because they had a will to know. Research was funded and supported because of its potential practical utility.
The successful explosion of the first atomic bomb, along with related and subsequent events, are now part of the objective history of humanity: some of the results of intentional human activity.
The objective world as it concerns humanity is always a transitory mirror of the human intentions and activity that have shaped it. As such, it reminds us of our power to shape the future.