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| So you're into sci fi? But what about sci fact? Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction... Each month our very own Voyager Science Queen* will bring you interesting, quirky and downright bizarre tasty morsels from the world of science. And its all completely, totally, 100% true! July Sci-Facts |
Science Page September 2009Epistemology & Agnotology Let’s look into the theories behind knowledge. Epistemology and Agnotology are both different ways of approaching the way knowledge is understood and constructed. It’s not who you know, or what you know, but how you know it that counts! Epistemology is the study of the theory of knowledge, though is a study of belief rather than learned knowledge. This is not the same definition of belief as in faith or spirituality, but belief in ‘the facts’ as we know them. For example, we all believe the sun is going to come up every morning, or that gravity stops everything from spinning off into space; this is the sort of knowledge that is studied by epistemologists. Agnotology is the study of culturally-induced ignorance, doubt, confusion and misinformation, usually caused by the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data. Examples are the deliberate attempts to keep the public in the dark about global warming, about the toxicity of food additives, about the lack of effects as promised by a cosmetic, or about the effects of recreational drugs, whatever. This ignorance is usually encouraged for a corporation’s financial gain. So, here we have two opposing philosophies of knowledge. What you just ‘know’ and what you ‘don’t know’. If you are reading this science page, you are taking part in a third type of knowledge: education, or learned knowledge. |
| *The Voyager Science Queen is also known as Lynne Lumsden Green So, who is this woman who attempts to entertain us with Science? Lynne Lumsden Green lives on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, and attends the University of the Sunshine Coast. Ever the perpetual student, she is adding a B.A. in Creative Writing to her B.SC. in Zoology (Jennifer Fallon is her role model). As one of the founding members of Scriber Space, the site for USC creative writers, she hopes to create a writing community as lively and as close as the Voyager writing community. She spends her non-study hours volunteering for writing-related events, writing, reading, and – oh yes – looking after her family. She is still passionately interested in anything and everything, and enjoys the opportunity to share this passion via the Science Page. Terry Pratchett, Isaac Asimov, Neil Gaiman, and all the Voyager authors are her favourite people on the planet...and one of her goals is to meet all of those authors, well, at least those authors still in the land of the living. Recently, her own writing efforts have been meeting with better success. She is putting this down to her excellent lecturers and persistence, and to the fact that you can eat chocolate while typing. Read previous Sci-Facts: Our New Dinosaurs Looking for more scientific oddities? Have you checked out Dr Steven Juan's website? He is, quite literally, the wizard of odds! |
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