There are different sources of knowledge: historical, scientific, engineering, business, philosophical, theological, etc. They work best when they work together. For example, even the best business could not construct a very good bridge if they ignored engineering knowledge. This also applies to the sciences. The natural sciences need to consider knowledge from history and engineering for example. The odd thing is that this is not normally done. In fact, some would say that science is the only source of knowledge and so should ignore everything else. This is called “scientism” or “positivism” and it is a form of willful ignorance.
In the 19th century. People such as Auguste Compte openly called for excluding other sources of knowledge from all sciences. He called this ideology “positivism” and surprisingly it caught on so that many people in the sciences think they cannot consider knowledge from any other source at all.
Some scientists and others dispute this ideology and are open to all relevant sources of knowledge when investigating the natural world. One group of these scientists are commonly called “creationists’ because they include knowledge from ancient history in their understanding of natural history. In particular, they include sources of knowledge that indicate an original creation, degeneration, and catastrophe should be included when studying astronomy, biology, and geology.
July 2011