Knowledge takes many forms: there are many ways of knowing about a subject matter. Some knowledge is in the form of high-level abstract principles, for example, whereas other knowledge gives you details of individual events. These ways of knowing are distributed among academic disciplines: the knowledge that we get from sociology is different from that which we get from history, for example. In order to recognise and use knowledge, and especially in order to be able to combine knowledge from different disciplines, it is useful to survey some of the kinds of knowledge that exist.
Write an essay of 1000 words (10% margin) in Chicago style.
Essay topic:
Write a short essay on the following question: How does the knowledge typically produced by the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities differ?
Possible ways to develop your essay if you wish:
• In the field of International Studies, how does knowledge from each of the three groups of sciences make a useful contribution? Give examples.
• How have the nomothetic and idiographic approaches contributed to creating the academic field of International Studies?
• In your own specialist discipline (or discipline in which you hope to specialise), which of the approaches makes the largest contribution? What contribution does or could knowledge of the approach make? Why is this so?
Sources: lecture “Ways of Knowing” (added file of lecture powerpoint) and the prescribed literature by Kagan (added file) and at least 2 additional sources found by independent research outside of the course material.
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