Reaction Paper
Chia Jung Yeh (Ruby)
Texas Woman’s University
Dr. May Sue Green
FS 6403 Theory Building in Family Sciences
Spring 2012
Reaction Paper
Introduction
Epistemology is an approach in how to study and gain knowledge. Kourany (2006) stated that the purpose of science is to pursue the truth. By accumulating such truths, philosophers attempt to acquire new knowledge. Popper, Pepper, Kuhn, and Feyerabend provided different perspectives and assumptions about what constitutes truth and reality and further demonstrated how people acquire knowledge. Some philosophers, like Kuhn and Feyerabend issued a challenge to scientific philosophers to make the social science field more relevant to actual science or what could be considered as science (Kourany, 2006). Basically, the four major theorists stand in contrast against the empiricist epistemology or logical empiricism (Deising, 1991). The four philosophy theorists provided a good foundation for later philosophical advances from metaphysics toward more scientific approaches to gain new knowledge rather than using the traditional observational approach alone. By reviewing these former philosophers, this author does not need to start from the beginning to construct a philosophy on how to gain knowledge and understand reality and truth. The purpose of this paper is to respond to the four major theorists’ theories and perspectives on how to acquire knowledge and achieve reality and the truth. This author will first discuss the methods of how to look at the truth based on the four major theorists, and further provide the comparisons and contrasts between the four theories. Next, this author will examine the epistemological viewpoint which was inspired by Pepper and further discuss why this position should be supported. By demonstrating the major concepts and assumptions of Pepper’s four world hypotheses, this author will apply Pepper’s theory in the language acquisition field. Through a discussion of the issues of nature and nurture, and continuity and discontinuity, this writer will address how this and Pepper’s theory could be applied and relate to language acquisition.
How to Pursue the Truth
Falsification was proposed by Popper in 1967 to pursue the truth even though he assumed that there was no way to