Classifications of knowledge: actors, disciplines and global traditions

Abstract

From the philosophical point of view in its Western-European tradition, classifications and hierarchies of knowledge have existed since antiquity (such as that established between opinion and knowledge), and they continue to operate, often implicitly, both in scientific practice and in scientific reflection. One consequence is the development of alternative conceptions of inter- and transdisciplinarity, in which stakeholders play a more or less central role, or even none at all. This paper seeks to contribute to the reflection on the classifications of knowledge. To this end, I first explore the conception of inter- and transdisciplinarity in two papers pertaining to current thinking on transdisciplinary research in Germany. Secondly, I explore part of the debate on the relationship between philosophy as a discipline and the sciences. In the latter case, it is a distinctive feature of philosophy to be closely connected to the knowledge mobilized by actors and speakers in their basic interactions. My analysis aims at clarifying the distinction between (a) the knowledge of these actors, (b) the knowledge that philosophy takes as its point of reference (according to Habermas' conception) and (c) the knowledge produced by scientific disciplinary methods. To conclude the paper, and given that the analysis takes place from a perspective internal to the German philosophical and research tradition, I will explore the idea that disciplinary boundaries are the result of a historical development and do not correspond to theoretical boundaries or boundaries related to the particular object of knowledge of the disciplines, in this case from a critical and postcolonial perspective and explore the consequences of accepting this conception for the classifications and hierarchies of knowledge.