When people explore the knowledge of this world, the world of appearances, people often refer to something as a “science” but it occurs to me that scientific knowledge of how a table is made and how to make a table are two separate things independent of the other. That being said, I’d like to briefly examine what I find to be the three broad categories of knowledge in this world that humanity values and uses in some fashion.
History is the most straightforward conceptually, because it relies the least on theory or induction. It, as all empirical knowledge not directly observable, does rely on the induction of authority figures. That people who have been trustworthy in the past will continue to be trustworthy; and yet how do we first even establish which account of History is trustworthy to begin with? There is nothing observable about History because by it’s very nature is entirely based on what no longer exists, and the laymen have nothing to directly access save copies of documentations and records that they have no way to demonstrate is legitimately from the hand of Thomas Jefferson or a forgery.
History is also arguably the least useful of the empirical endevours, for while scientific fields give us past studies which we assume through induction give us knowledge of how the objects and people in the world will behave in the future and craftsmanship knowledge of how to make something, whether a table or work of art History tells us literally nothing except what has come before us. Like a story only one that we are led to believe is true. Our story. One cannot even say that we gain knowledge of future government turmoil or economic crises from studying History, because it is economics that studies how humans organize resources, and how one policy affects the price of corn in Idaho, and it is psychology that tells us how humans likely will react to authority figures in a given country – whether they are criminalizing drugs or instructing the citizens to turn in individuals of a particular race or ethnicity.
History in its purest form is the facts of human existence, without any intellectual abstraction or narrative. Someone may very well argue that all governments and peoples provide a narrative towards History, and while this is true I would argue that like a scientist going through leg bones to find the ones that fit his theory of race, even if all the data he uses is accurate or true, the fact that he is leaving out data from his pool makes it in some sense “false” or not the whole truth. The same is true of a Historian who leaves or emphasizes facts in an attempt to tell the story he wants told. Just as there is no normativity contained in science or even craftsmanship there is no normativity in History. No good guys or bad guys. Only people who slay and are slain. Who is good and who is evil if such ethical constructs even reflect something that exists is up for the individual to reason in a totally separate branch of inquiry. Just as it is the Journalists job to report the facts of the present day and nothing more, so it is of the Historian and the facts.
Science is such a broad field of endeavor and yet all sub-sects function largely the same. Observation, Hypothesis, Experimentation, Collecting Results and Theory Construction. While there is no theory in History, for the explanation of human behavior is in the science of Psychology, science would be almost nothing without theory. Science tells us that a pigeon pecks at corn or is left unmotivated to peck at corn. Theories are never proven they are merely models that are the best functional explanation at the time. For a Skeptic could always create elaborate stories of Evil Demons tricking us to believe that the force of one ball propels another into a circular hole, when it is really is telepathic powers making it happen. A theory can never be shown to be true but merely predictive. It’s the power of prediction which makes theory useful and makes it more than merely humans unthinkingly saying to themselves “more of the same.”
“The sun rose in the morning and set in the evening today. What will happen tomorrow?”
“More of the same.”
“I studied for an exam and received an A-. What will happen next exam period?”
“More of the same.”
“I licked a frog and became ill. What will happen next time?”
“More of the same. But I think it’s best to leave this matter unknown.”
It is true that in some sense Sciences mantra is “more of the same” but what makes science a process of the thinking mind is the human curiosity in finding ways of explaining why more of the same? And why sometimes not? Not every person who eats bad seafood becomes ill, though many do. Not everyone who smokes get lung cancer, though many do. Science tells us probability, even if the likelihood is incredibly high it is never certain. It is the strength of our theoretical models that allow us to gauge both the strength of our predictive direction and probability. Both what will happen and how likely it is that such-and-such will happen.
Science is the most intelligent of the external pursuits of knowledge and understanding because of its theoretical nature. It is incredibly practical, as the realized dreams of modern industry and mass-production show us, but it’s goal is in essence entirely theoretical and absolutely unpractical. It is the scientist who wishes to know how others can successfully make an atomic bomb. How it can exist from raw materials because knowledge and predictive models has educated the scientist of how it will behave when it is brought into existence. The model of Pinicchio being the first step into making him a real boy.
It is the Nuclear Engineers who make the bomb without necessarily knowing the abstract science and it is for Ethical Philosophers to discuss whether the bomb ought to be used and in what conditions. Science can tell us as little about the normativity of atomic science as can science instruct us on the metaphysics of it. The scientist can be also an engineer and an ethical philosopher but if he is all three he is performing three different roles that are distinct from each other the same way a farmer may be simultaneously a Zoologist or Biologist and a farmhand when he milks a cow. This does not change the reality of the separation of theoretical and practical knowledge. Both certainly can influence the other but the categories remain distinct from each other.
This leaves us with craftsmanship as the last field of study. Craftsmanship is the essence of practical knowledge, because it is knowledge that is learned through doing rather than through being merely told Napoleon killed X amount of Russians in the wars of his namesake, or that the boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius. I can tell you how a table is made, but you will not know the craft of making it until you attempt to do it. The largest distinction here is in aesthetics. One can be told that studies have shown that paintings of such-and-such a style provoke certain emotions, but this fact in the realm of science of aesthetics tells us nothing about how to paint which is the craft of painting proper. Aesthetics is the most fascinating of the crafts of humanity because its desired end is not in use but in altering the subjective state of either the creator or the observer. Either merely in the moment of observation or in the future for continued effect. This is in essence the theory that Aesthetics can have an impact on the moral feelings and behavior of a human in a similar way that his life events can impact his feelings and behavior. Though the effect can certainly be exaggerated as a concept it seems entirely plausible. Especially when considering the fields of aesthetics where the observer momentarily feels as if they are the character in the play or film, and momentarily embodies him through the observer’s empathy and the creator’s effective story telling. Through the genius of his craft. Craft that the scientist later studies to understand just as the physicist attempts to understand how a “good” or desirable table is made by learning all the relevant information of the wood, the mathamatetics of the angles etc. so a factory can mass produce them, rather than to master this craft himself. If he did so, to reiterate, he would be both a scientist and an artisan but his knowledge of abstract understanding and his ability to practically realize would be separate conceptually though causally interdependent. The same way a bullet being fired from a gun causes the death of a man and yet we do not say that the sciences of the physics of compulsion and that of biology are conceptually related even though objects in the world are affected by both in a complex web of factors.
The world of appearances is messy, it is one of the main roles of the main to understand the proper categories behind these appearances as much as it is to observe and learn them. Only by knowing the proper nature of a category of knowledge and the limits and power or perception can true knowledge be gained. Otherwise we can easily make claims to knowledge that we don’t have access to such as metaphysics and ethics.