Table Of ContentA Brief History of Knowledge
for Social Science Researchers
A Brief History of Knowledge for Social Science Researchers outlines a
history of knowledge from Ancient Greece to present day, in Europe
and the Western world. This outline provides the basis for understand-
ing where various research methods originate, and their epistemologi-
cal, historical, political and social roots.
This book provides social science researchers with an understand-
ing of how research methods developed, and how their truth c riteria,
and what is accepted as knowledge, spring from human history.
Research is often reduced to data collection, results and publication in
the stressful, results-oriented academic environment. But research is a
human enterprise, a product of both individual creativity and histori-
cal, political and social conditions. This book will focus on how shared
research criteria (as we know them today) were developed through the
work and thought of philosophers, social activists and researchers.
This book will be useful for graduate and post-graduate students,
particularly those studying Research Methods, and Philosophy of
Science courses; and for experienced social science researchers who
wish to understand how research methods have developed in human
history.
Deborah Court is an associate professor of Education at Bar-Ilan
University and research consultant at the Arab Academic College
in Israel. She conducts ethnographic research in multicultural and
inter-religious settings. She is keenly aware of the importance for
graduate students and experienced researchers to understand the
epistemological underpinnings of research methods.
A Brief History of
Knowledge for Social
Science Researchers
Before Method
Deborah Court
First published 2020
by Routledge
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© 2020 Deborah Court
The right of Deborah Court to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-0-367-37079-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-35260-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
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Contents
Preface vi
1 How can we think about research? A gallery of heroes 1
2 Epistemology and its relevance to research 8
3 A historical sketch of knowledge in the Western
world: the Greeks through the Middle Ages 17
4 A historical sketch of knowledge in the Western
world: from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment 28
5 A historical sketch of knowledge in the Western
world: from the Enlightenment onward 39
6 Are we there yet? The birth and development
of the social sciences 47
7 How can we think about theory? A gallery of heroes 59
8 A brief history of knowledge, and the vistas beyond 77
Index 79
Preface
When I was doing my doctoral studies in education at the University
of British Columbia in the late 1980s, I was fortunate to have as my
advisor the late Professor LeRoi Daniels, a philosopher and epistemol-
ogist who introduced me to the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert
Ryle, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and other writers on philosophy of
science and philosophy of knowledge. Thank you, Roi, wherever you
may be. I took the philosophical bent with which you imbued all your
students forward to my own research and teaching.
This little book grew out of a doctoral course I taught for many
years, in which I introduced doctoral students to the history of
knowledge and asked them to reflect on their own decisions about
method, methodology and theory, through the lens of epistemology
and the roots and implications of different research paradigms. While
some thought it a waste of time – please, let me get on with my data
collection! – others came to it like thirsty plants. Rushed and pressured
to make methodological decisions and complete their dissertations,
they were given little time to reflect, and to experience the intellec-
tual enjoyment of learning about, and seeing themselves as part of, the
great human story of the development of research knowledge.
Before method, we need to know from whence we came. I hope this
book, like an album of family photographs, will help to show how
each of us is part of the continuing, unfolding story of the search for
questions, answers, knowledge and meaning.
1 How can we think about
research? A gallery of heroes
What does it mean to “think about research”? We need to do research,
right? We need to learn statistical tests, concepts and methods of
analysis; how to build and validate questionnaires; test hypotheses
and analyze results. We need to learn how to conduct interviews and
observations, analyze documents and write a research report! And
theory! We need a theoretical framework! So much to do; who has
time to “think about research”?
This little book provides an opportunity to do just that: to slow
down and explore some essential questions. The most basic: what is
knowledge, to which all research strives to contribute? Where does
knowledge come from, how does it develop? What kinds of k nowledge
come from research, and how does knowledge change as a result of
research? What underlies methodology and method, research tools
and procedures, methods of analysis, use of theory, construction and
testing of theory? How do methodologies and theories develop, change
and advance? And what is theory, anyway? Where does it come from?
Knowledge, research methodologies and theory are a moving stream,
flowing ever forward. Rocks in the way may temporarily i mpede the
flow, but water is inexorable; it will find or make a path and con-
tinue to progress. Clearly people are responsible for the development
of knowledge. People are the products of their time and place; their
culture and its knowledge, standards and beliefs. R esearch is a human
enterprise, a product of both individual creativity and historical, po-
litical and social conditions. Great researchers (and here we i ntend
philosophers, philosophers of science, researchers of the sciences and
the social sciences) are those who, while necessarily working within
available resources and conditions, succeed in thinking beyond their
time and place, imagining beyond current k nowledge, breaking bound-
aries and genuinely moving knowledge forward. Sometimes this means
being very brave.
2 How can we think about research?
As a way to illustrate these important understandings, we will begin
with a Gallery of Heroes – people who made particular contributions
to advance the research enterprise. This is not intended to be in any
way a comprehensive list, for of course there could never be such a list.
These brief portraits provide examples of how one person’s work can
move our collective understanding forward and will serve to awaken
questions that will be explored throughout the book.
Nicolaus Copernicus 1473–1543, Poland
While the orthodoxy of his time stated that the stable earth is the
center of the universe, and that the sun, planets and stars move around
the earth (the geocentric theory), the alternate idea that the earth is
a planet which rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun (the
heliocentric theory), had been proposed hundreds of years before
by Greek scientists such as Pythagoras. Copernicus’ contribution
was that he used data, mathematical measurements from the simple
instruments available at the time, to give quantitative substantiation
to this idea. This in effect created a new, measurement-based argu-
ment for an old, theoretical idea. Copernicus was not able to prove
his argument; rather, he substantiated it mathematically. Unfortu-
nately, the idea that the earth was the center still held sway; there
were “ epistemological, philosophical, religious, theological, scrip-
tural, physical, mechanical, astronomical and empirical objections”
( Finocchiaro 2010: xiv) to Copernicus’ work! Though Copernicus
made fairly modest claims in his published work, his book was never-
theless banned by the Church shortly a fter he died. Copernicus’ syn-
thesizing of observational data in effect launched modern astronomy.
Galileo Galilei 1554–1643, Italy
Galileo, working almost a hundred years after Copernicus, made
many discoveries in mathematics, motion, physics and astronomy.
He had the advantage of using the recently invented telescope, upon
which he improved, to make observations. Significantly, his approach
was experiment driven. He, like Copernicus, espoused the heliotropic
theory. His experiments, measurements and observations allowed him
to disprove the geocentric theory. His published work was banned by
the Church, and he was tried for heresy. The charges of heresy were
based on two reasons: first, his claim that the heliotropic theory was
true, and, second, his claim that truth in the natural world can be
found not by following Scripture, but by experimentation and data
collection and analysis (Finocchiaro 2006). At his trial, he was forced
How can we think about research? 3
to recant his scientific claims and publicly state the truth of Scripture.
He is often called “the father of modern science” and is seen as the
progenitor of the scientific method.
Marie Curie 1867–1934, Poland, France
Marie Curie was Polish-born and a naturalized French citizen. A
chemist and physicist, she was the first woman to win a Nobel prize
and remains the only woman to win a Nobel prize twice. Among her
many accomplishments during her illustrious career, she discovered
two new elements, radium and polonium, to add to the recently cre-
ated periodic table. She developed the theory of radioactivity, a term
she coined. During World War I, she developed mobile radiography
units to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Building on C urie’s
experiments with the behavior of elemental atoms, other scientists
discovered that atoms are not indivisible, they are made up of smaller
particles (Pasachoff 1996). Marie Curie died from the effects of
radiation after her decades of work with radioactive materials, whose
dangers were not yet understood. Her research into radioactive ele-
ments and her development of the theory of radioactivity paved the
way, among developments in many other areas, to radiation treatment
for cancer patients. She is known as “the mother of modern physics.”
John Dewey, 1859–1952, United States
John Dewey was a psychologist, philosopher and educator. As well as
writing extensively on child-centered pedagogy that begins with the
interests of the child, he also wrote on epistemology, ethics, art and
political and social theory. He strongly believed in the importance of
democracy and saw the school as the natural place for democratic atti-
tudes, knowledge, propensities, skills and critical and reflective think-
ing to be learned, in this way both respecting the child and building a
strong civil society. He analyzed how people think and learn. He wrote
on the centrality of students’ direct experience in education through
active engagement with problems, ideas and other people. Dewey was
instrumental in the progressive movement in education. Progressiv-
ism, based in the epistemology of pragmatism, of which he was one
of the progenitors,1 was out of step with the mass education and rote
learning that developed as a result of the industrial revolution. Dewey:
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself” (Dewey
1916: 239). Dewey’s work continues to this day to influence educators,
psychologists and philosophers, and his books are continually mined,
re-examined and analyzed, so profuse and profound were his ideas.2
