Monday, October 29, 2007

What sorts of knowledge and or truths does this subject convey

The subject that I have chosen is Economics.

Economics is also known as a social science, this subject tries to study human behaviour during changes in various factors in relation to how resources are best used. As the concept of economics is far too complex models are created to simplify things.

It is with these models that economists use to test human and economic responses when a variable (such as the supply of rice) would change (with all other things being the same). However, the real world works in a much more complex way. By trying to represent the world with a simplified model, we would only have a glimpse of the inner workings of our economies. As a result of us using models to learn about economics, how can we be sure that the knowledge provided to us are true?

Then theres the prediction of human behaviour, economists assume that people will make rational decisions and go for the best choices available to them while entreprenures will choose to produce goods for maximum profits. However, we have seen many times in history when people have made the wrong decisions and have caused castrophic problems. Assumptions are also involved in economics, for all we know these assumptions could be wrong. This reliance on something so abstract and unverifyable leaves us wondering whether we'll ever grasp the truth of economics.

With different people seeing and observing the world in different ways (which is shaped by their experiences and their tinted glasses) different opinions and theories are presented. The conclusions reached can sometimes contradict one another. I would think that the truth and knowledge for this subject would only be perfectly correct for the person who thought it up, this is because people perceive the world differently and they have different values and opinions.

1 comment:

Steve Burnett said...

Good Duncan and nicely tied in to sense perception.In economics,are you dealing with experiential, propositional or practical knowledge?