Experiment, description, measurement, observation - all these methods of empirical knowledge are most often used in exact scientific disciplines and natural ones - physics, chemistry, biology, geography and others. For mathematics, however, they are absolutely not typical, but nevertheless they played a leading role there, when mathematical knowledge was only in its infancy. The school curriculum in mathematics still retains some of the methods of empirical knowledge - in visualization and technical training. It, as such, can be theoretical - with completely different approaches to obtaining information. The methods of empirical cognition do not include axiomatization, as well as formalization and the hypothetical-deductive method.
Experiment
Together with the description and measurement, the establishment of an experiment achieves a decrease in passive contemplation, activates activities, teaches purposefulness through the use of models, devices, and other demonstration aids. If science is not experimental, like chemistry or physics, ready-made knowledge is used in teaching, but the methods of empirical cognition help them to assimilate well. Thus, scientific hypotheses are formulated that justify or refute them.
With observations, measurements and descriptions, you can create effective special directions for teaching children who have a real opportunity to independently discover evidence that is obvious to adults, patterns, geometric axioms, and the like. According to the results after their application, empirical knowledge methods will allow each child to draw inductive conclusions and discover new truths in the future.
Observation
In cognition in general, and in empirical in particular, sensory prevails. The simplest form, based on the senses, is observation. A specific subject feels the maximum influence from the side of the object despite its minimal activity. Surveillance can be armed or not, the difference lies in the presence or absence of a variety of instruments with which the process of researching specific objects proceeds.
In addition, they can be studied both in an artificial environment and in a natural one, and observation will, accordingly, be called laboratory or field. With its help, information is extracted quite extensive and valuable if the observer has hearing, smell, vision and a huge amount of time. Information data obtained through observation, topics and roads. Where there are specific deadlines and times in short supply, other general scientific methods of empirical knowledge should work.
Cognitive processes
Mastering knowledge is a necessary, continuous and constant process, as well as a long one. That is why the general scientific methods of empirical knowledge are quite early and widespread - humanity sought to gain new experience, and civilization - to develop. Knowledge was accumulated and improved, and with it the world that people are actively mastering changed.
More and more sophisticated means and deep sources of knowledge are being used. In this regard, it was divided into ordinary and scientific. The first is inherent in all people, without exception, since special skills and special skills do not require. But the methods of empirical and theoretical knowledge require professional activity and scientific channels.
Cognition structure
First of all, you need a subject - an individual who forms the latest knowledge, or a community - a laboratory, university, research institute, and so on, that do the same. It is the subjects of knowledge that are the engines of civilization in general and progress in particular. Secondly, an object is also necessary, that is, that part of our reality that must be investigated both subjectively and objectively. Methods of empirical knowledge - description, measurement, experiment - the first steps to scientific activity.
Objects can be not only any objects, nature, elements, but also a way of thinking, and public opinion, and the development of religion, and even the mental state of one particular person or a whole group. In a word, everything that should be investigated at the behest of time and public interest. The structure and methods of empirical knowledge also determined the third component - this knowledge itself as the result of research, without which the development of civilization is simply impossible.
Two types of knowledge
Reflection of reality can be sensual and rational. From here the basic methods of theoretical and empirical knowledge are derived. The latter contains three main forms that are closely interconnected.
- Representation. The image of an object that was not perceived in reality, which once in the past influenced the subject through its sensory organs, but its visual image had a generalized character.
- Perception. The image is created in real time and comprehensively.
- Sensation. Reflection of the characteristics and properties of an object in the mind of the subject through its senses.
Their differences
Theoretical knowledge is fundamentally different from empirical. Both the scientific work and the approach to research are completely different. If the methods of empirical knowledge in science are most often just a way of cognitive activity, then theorists know reality based on the results achieved by science: here the orders of abstraction are high, laws, hypotheses, categories and concepts are applied.
Empirical knowledge usually precedes theoretical. There is only one difference: the beginning is based on feelings, and the continuation is based on rational and real facts. That is why hypothesizing does not apply to methods of empirical knowledge, as well as searches for form.
Epistemology
Scientific facts can be established and undergo primary - subjective - processing, if the initial moment of the general process of study is tightly connected with the feelings of the researcher, this is how he objectively connects with the outside world, and it is these five organs that give him the most direct concern about things, objects, properties natural world and phenomena. The above basic methods of empirical cognition - representation, perception and sensation - are epistemological concepts of the forms of sensuality. In sensations, the individual properties of things and objects of the objective world are displayed at the moment when they directly affect the senses.
This cognitive phenomenon has no structure, does not psychologically decompose, since it is the acquisition of elementary knowledge. This is how simple qualities are displayed in sensations: trembling, sweet, heavy, loud, hot, red, and so on. This information is skipped due to the ability of the human sense organs in the following sequence: through vision, then touch, then hearing, taste and, finally, the sense of smell. Vision is really given a leading role, since up to two thousand colors and shades are able to distinguish between human eyes, and the gaze scans the shape of an object along and across instantly.
Scientific experience
Observations that are carried out purposefully are strictly selective.If a scientist has any preliminary hypotheses and ideas, he focuses on the specifics: what to observe and how, what plan will require measurements, how to track changes in the subject. He also finds the technical means necessary for a reliable result. From year to year, technical equipment is becoming more complicated, but from the time of Galileo the essence of cognitive observation remains the same.
Experiment and other basic methods of empirical and theoretical knowledge as the main methods of research are part of scientific experience. As an example, a varied change in the conditions in which the subject is located can be given. It requires tight control of each such change, measurement of all parameters of the ongoing changes, the use of special equipment, tools and instruments. And the whole course of scientific experience is supplied with a mandatory, accurate and detailed description akin to the protocol, where all the changes that were noticed are recorded. Tables, graphs, symbols, figures, mathematical or physical formulas and so on are used.
Equipment
Types of technical equipment for empirical observation for the best knowledge of things and phenomena are extremely diverse. Methods of empirical and theoretical knowledge without appropriate support, for the most part, cannot be applied.
- Measuring instruments: scales, ruler, speedometer, ammeter, radiometer and the like, helping to establish purely quantitative values of the studied objects.
- Auxiliary devices: microscope, telescope and the like, improving the perception of poorly felt things, objects and natural phenomena with the help of human senses. Microbes with normal vision, for example, cannot be considered.
- Instruments for analysis: an oscilloscope, a chronometer, an electrocardiograph, and many others, allowing to analyze the internal structure of processes, phenomena, as well as their functions.
Image formation
With the help of experimental (experimental) knowledge in humans, concepts about the essence of knowable objects cannot be formed. This limitation is overcome by the inclusion of rational knowledge based on logic. That is, his character is obtained indirectly. The next level is the study of an object or phenomenon through reflection, the search for universal connections. These are both logical and intuitive moments of cognition, directly related to things and objects.
Intuition and logic were comprehended in a philosophical manner even in antiquity - Socrates, Aristotle, Plato. Later a detailed analysis was carried out by Epicurus, who defined the concept of intuition. Even then they were convinced and were not mistaken that the basis of practical actions is not so much physical creative abilities as the ability to think logically. At the same time, methods and forms of empirical knowledge were described in the form in which scientists still operate on them.
