• What is scientific knowledge?
• Characteristics of scientific knowledge
• Examples of scientific knowledge
• empirical knowledge
• Other types of knowledge

We explain what scientific knowledge is and what it pursues. Characteristics of scientific knowledge and concrete examples.

Scientific knowledge is based on research and evidence.

What is scientific knowledge?

Scientific knowledge is the set of verifiable knowledge given by certain thanks to the steps contemplated in the scientific method. That is to say, that knowledge that is obtained through the rigorous, methodical and verifiable study of the phenomena of nature.

Scientific knowledge is based on evidence and is collected in scientific theories: consistent and deductively complete sets of propositions around a topic of interest. interest scientific, which describe it and give it a verifiable explanation. These theories can be renewed, modified or even replaced by another to the extent that their results or interpretations better respond to the reality and are consistent with other scientific postulates proven to be true.

Scientific knowledge, as well as religious or mystical knowledge, is often thought to be based on pure faith in the interpretation of the facts; which is not really true, since unlike magical, pseudoscientific or religious discourses, the science It is based on the verifiability of its assessments, applying experimental, repeatable and duly delimited mechanisms.

Thus, contrary to what its common meaning suggests, a scientific theory is not simply a hypothesis (“one more theory”), but a complex and complete formulation that gives meaning to the results obtained experimentally.When scientific laws are demonstrated and integrated into a theoretical scientific perspective, they acquire the rank of Theory.

Characteristics of scientific knowledge

Scientific knowledge is based on research: the collection of data based on previous scientific experiences, as well as own experimental procedures, which, when replicated under controlled conditions, can be more fully understood.

Scientific knowledge is classified into two categories:

• Tacit knowledge. It's about the technical knowledge, technological or theoretical that are specific to the person, that is to say, that they form part of his encyclopedia of the world and of the perspective that the culture to which it belongs. They are not formally learned through study or practice. education.
• explicit knowledge. It is that formal, specialized scientific knowledge that must be acquired through bibliography, formal courses or institutions educational, since they have to do with accumulated scientific knowledge.

Examples of scientific knowledge

The discovery of electricity is an example of scientific knowledge.

Some concrete examples of scientific knowledge can be:

• The mathematical theorems of Pythagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher, which are still valid more than 2000 years later and are formally taught in school.
• The biochemical understanding of antibiotics from the discovery of penicillin in the twentieth century and its medical administration to combat infections.
• Isaac Newton's formulations on the movement, which today have the rank of law and are taught in the subject of physical.
• The description of the processes of breathing and of photosynthesis carried out by animal and vegetable beings respectively.
• The understanding of anatomy at a level that allows the practice of transplants.
• The study of the formation of Solar system and the movements of planet Earth, as well as its impact on our daily lives: day and night, weather seasons, solstices, etc.
• The discovery of electricity and of the capacity of transmission, accumulation and use of the same, which gave rise to a true industrial and technological revolution.
• The detailed explanation of the water cycle or water cycle in its various phases.
• The understanding of atom and of the forces that it contains, set in motion in peaceful atomic energy and in the atomic bombs of the 20th century.
• The explanation of the origin of tremors and earthquakes in the tectonic plates of the Earth crust.
• The discovery of microscopic life that gave rise to the pasteurization and preservation of foods in the long term, forever changing the way we eat.

empirical knowledge

Empirical knowledge is what we obtain from direct experience with the world, and that is limited to what our senses and emotions tell us. perceptions. In this way, it is very far from being a source of absolute truths, since we can perceive things that are not there (or perceive them wrongly), and even not perceive things and forces that are there but are invisible.

It is, however, an important ingredient of scientific knowledge, since not all the research experience can be mediated by books or what has been said before by others, but must be able to be confronted experimentally in an empirical, face-to-face, concrete way.

Other types of knowledge

Other forms of knowledge are the following:

• empirical knowledge. That which is acquired through direct experience, repetition or participation, without the need for an approach to the abstract, but from the things themselves.
• philosophical knowledge. The one who detaches from thought human, in the abstract, using various logical methods or reasoning formal, which does not always follow directly from reality, but from the imaginary representation of reality.
• intuitive knowledge. That which is acquired without the mediation of formal reasoning, quickly and unconsciously, the result of often inexplicable processes.
• religious knowledge. That which is linked to the mystical and religious experience, that is, to the knowledge that studies the link between the human being and the divine.