Areas of Knowledge: Overview

The divisions between subjects

Paradigms Paradeigma (Greek)- ‘pattern’ ‘a set of interrelated ideas for making sense of one or more aspects of reality’

Ways of Knowing and Areas of Knowledge Do disciplines build on truths gained through Ways of Knowing? Or do they act to correct misunderstandings and falsehoods that arise from the Ways of Knowing?

The relationships between subjects multi-disciplinary: separate disciplines working together trans-disciplinary: differences between disciplines dissolved cross-disciplinary: one discipline interpreted in terms of another inter-disciplinary: blanket term covering all the others

Is there a hierarchy of subjects?

C P Snow: ‘The Two Cultures’

Consilience ‘nature is organized by simple universal laws of physics to which all other laws and principles can eventually be reduced.’ - E. O Wilson- Consilience- The Unity of Knowledge