What is knowledge? The definition of social science, knowledge categories

Knowledge is the basis of our existence in this world, created by man according to the laws formed by the human society. Huge arrays of information of a different plan have become our heritage, thanks to the discoveries of our ancestors.

Knowledge and skills - that's what we are guided by the system that we get to almost immediately after birth. And it's wonderful that we can use the ready data, making our conclusions based on them.

But what is knowledge? The definition of social science and other concepts accompanying this, are of interest to us in our article. We hope that the information collected will help to consciously approach the problem of knowledge and take their meaning in the life of modern man.

What is knowledge? Definition in Social Studies

One of the sciences about all phenomena connected with the social life of man is social knowledge. It gives us a clear definition of this term. So, in accordance with the terminology of social science, knowledge is the result of cognitive (in other sources - cognitive) human activities.

In addition, knowledge is a form in which there are formulated conclusions and fixed facts, are systematized and stored for the purpose of transfer and use.

Knowledge and knowledge

In addition to the immediate question, what is knowledge (the definition of social science we gave above), we should also understand the accompanying concepts. The most relevant to the full consideration of the issue is the concept of knowledge.

Cognition is the process through which a person receives one or another knowledge. Facts about objective reality are reflected in the mind of a person, taking their place there. The subject of knowledge is the person himself, and the object is that array of facts about phenomena and objects of reality, collected and presented in a certain form.

Characteristics of knowledge

Deciphering the concept of "knowledge" is not only concerned with social science, but also philosophy, psychology. Thus, in contemporary philosophy, disputes over what information is knowledge is still relevant.

According to the current opinion of modern thinkers, in order to move into this category, information should have some characteristics, namely, to be true, confirmed and trustworthy.

As you can see, all the criteria are very relative and subjective. This is the reason for the openness of this issue to the modern sciences, which include questions on social science.

Classification of knowledge

Knowledge is an extensive category of social science. Therefore, a wide classification of this concept is inevitable. It includes many different criteria, some of which are obvious, others are the result of the thought of philosopher researchers.

So, one of the obvious classifications of knowledge is by carrier, in other words, by the location of knowledge. As we can imagine, they are stored in the memory of people, printed publications, all kinds of electronic media, in databases and others.

More interesting, in our opinion, the classification of knowledge - in terms of scientific degree. In accordance with it, knowledge is scientific and unscientific. Each species has its own subspecies.

Thus, scientific knowledge can be empirical (obtained as a result of one's own observations, cognition) and theoretical (perception of truth as abstract models of data about the world - tables, schemes, abstractions, analogies).

There are more varieties of unscientific knowledge, and they are in themselves interesting as categories. To unscientific knowledge are those that are data about elementary everyday things - everyday and practical. Pseudoscientific knowledge is one that operates with known scientific hypotheses that have not yet been confirmed or refuted. Pseudoscientific knowledge is what we call prejudices, misconceptions, conjectures. There are also quasi-scientific (implanted by theories, but not confirmed by the facts), antiscientific (utopian, undermining the notion of reality), parascientific (which until now it is not possible to find confirmation).

Questions on social studies consider a small part of the types of knowledge. However, for the purpose of self-education it is interesting to know about the existing theories and divisions of information arrays accumulated by mankind.

Conclusion

We have considered in our article one of the fundamental definitions of the science of social science - knowledge. So what is knowledge? The definition of social science tells us that this is the result of human cognitive activity , as well as the form in which this result is stored and transmitted.

The modern classification of knowledge is very broad and takes into account many criteria. And our everyday, and professional knowledge, and exclusively scientific facts, and utopian hypotheses - all these are separate types and subspecies of knowledge.

We hope that our article was interesting for you.