The current understanding of Knowledge

In Chorus I of his poem The Rock, T. S. Eliot (1960) asks-

                     Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

                     Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

                                                                                         

Knowledge, according to N. Stehr, is the capacity to act. The sociological analysis of knowledge deals with the ontology of the knowledge i.e how knowledge is conceptualized and theorized in relation to society. 

Now-a-days it is common to listen that we are living in the knowledge society. The word knowledge society has become popular in society. It denotes the transformation of society toward a new phase. 

Knowledge is an anthropological constant. The sociological account suggests that human actions have been always mediated by knowledge. Even the ancient society like Rome, China, Aztec Empire have gained and maintained power because of their superior knowledge appropriation and access to technological innovation. But what is fundamentally distinct from the old society  is that in today's society knowledge has gained a prominent position in the society. In the words of D. Bell, it has become the axial principle of our life and society. J. S. Mill in The Spirit of the Age has mentioned that intellectual accomplishments of the age make the inevitability the social progress imminent. However, this increase in wisdom doesn't automatically translate into the improvement of overall social conditions of people.

Knowledge is a peculiar entitiy, unlike commodity even if it is sold remain in the domain of the producers. It exists in both objectified as well as embodied forms and is private as well as public goods. The ethos of science demands that knowledge should be made universally available as well as linked to local, contingent circumstances.

Knowledge, of course, can be appropriated like things without getting into direct contact. This is precisely what is happening in our schools today. Today, learning doesn't involve observation and getting into direct contact. It is more mabout access to objectified form data storage like reading from books and so on.

Modern society is based on such conceptualization of knowledge that is characterized by separation of theory and praxis. Even with such conceptualization, it provides differential access to stocks of knowledge to different segments of the society.

With the changing importance of knowledge what has changed is the very notion of knowledge. The word knowledge is too often equated with scientific and technical knowledge. This is mainly due to reasons (i). Under the veneer of industrial and scientific enterprise, certain version of the Enlightenment project was propagated and appropriated by the western epistemic community. (ii). Modern social world is predicated on the same principles of Modernization and rationalization on which the project of Empire was propagated. Both of these factors induced the sudden popularity of scienticism in a society that claim that scientific language is the only language of knowledge. 

Although, science always had flip-side, it is only recently that the it has faced real crisis of legitimation in society. It has came under attack from various quarters. Standpoint theory argues in favor of plural and multi-modal versions of science. The rise of new disciplines like Science and Technological Studies (STS), Public Understanding of Science (PUS), Science Studies, Science Policies, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK), Social History of Science, Philosophy of Science on the interface of science and society point that the transformation of modern society into knowledge society is one of the important phenomenon of our era and the fact that there is the limit of the power of the euro-centric version scienticism, scientific expertise, and techno-based management.

M. Apple works on Ideology suggest that knowledge is always hinged with the politics of power and what is considered as the right version of knowledge is mostly depend upon the fact that which groups of society sit over the politics of the day. In today's society, it is difficult to say that where are the levers of power. 

In the late phase of modernity, the steering capacity of the large institutions of society has sharply decreased. Now, as Stehr argued things rather than simply 'happened' have moved to 'made to happen'. This is a phenomenal change in perspective the way one powerful social institutiondetermines the legitimacy of another institution. Along with it, there is also rise in the growing assertion of individual rights and segmented vision of holism that have made the society fragile and vulnerable.

In this context, the current theory of science lacks the wider vision of the science-society relationships that is required to cross the traditional epistemology of science and formulate alternatives to modern science.  Current thoery ignores and excludes the social functionality of the other variants of knowledge like indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge and pushed into 'non-knowledge' category. And that is the main liability of the modern science, as many theorists have already explained.

What is Science?

What is science -as an idea and a practice? What is the relationship between science and society given the fact that modern science has emerged in a particular space and time. There is a vague understanding of the  realtionship of science and society. In fact the understanding of science is also under attack like never before. To rescue the original idea of science from the clings of hypermodernity and techno-rationality, it is important to reveal that the current conceptualization of science is narrow and euro-centric and also to approach the science from multiple perspectives.

As we know, science is not limited to to making of big Telescope, Supe-Computer and mega enterprise. It is an activity as well as an idea. It is a mode of thinking that grew out of society's considerations and compulsions at different points of time. So, to put society and the science in opposite contradictory box is against the grain.

Historically, science, as Shiv Vishwanathan has put it, is a democratic imagination- the imagination that is based on the notions of logic, truth, and knowledge that generates the power of critical inquiry. It is a way of knowing and acting that can be summed up as socially-embedded knowledge. 

Modern science consists of rationalism, empiricism and belief in material reality. It has special historicity. The framework it provides is embedded in the ideas of institutional forms of the social constituent and the social order. 

Everett Mendelsohn, a Harvard University professor, defines the science as a social activity that grew and produced in society in association with social enterprise. According to him, the boundary between scientific and non-scientific knowledge is porous and text-centric. That's why, he calls for the new way of understanding the science along with the notion of magic, miracles and range of experiences. Popper, another philosopher of science, suggests that to get knowledge legitimized in society, the propositions explaining the phenomena must be open to falsification in society. Kuhn has also called attention, when he said that it is often not possible to clearly distinguish between personal commitment and professional commitment to faith and reason. Hence, it is proper to say that the right way to approach the science and scientific knowledge goes through the socio-historical pathways. In fact, the rigid boundary between cognitive and social levels of science does not exist. So, the approach to study the science, as Polanyi has argued in his book Science, Religion and Faith calls for new epistemological vision.

There are many questions that emerged when we put science in continuum with the magic and miracle. What is the flip side of science? Does differents segment of the society approach science differently? And more importantly, is the science only what scientists do?