A dad overhears his daughter coming home, telling her friend “I did it! ” Depending on whether the dad has an overprotective or optimistic perspective of his daughter, the dad will further investigate by either stalking current and past boyfriends or flipping through the stack of college acceptance letters to figure out what “it” refers to. A perspective is the frame of mind through which a person processes thoughts. It determines the methods that the investigator will use to obtain knowledge and gives direction to the inquirer’s search.
To clarify, “the knower’s perspective is essential” means that its is extremely important or influential to have a perspective when pursuing knowledge. Perspectives not only include the knower’s personal knowledge but also their disposition. In the area of mathematics, the individual can influence the direction in which we pursue knowledge and help build shared knowledge. The application or manipulation of statistics allows the individual using the statistic to create a bias by using a misleading portrayal of data.
There are varying methods to present numbers, from graphs to percentages or data summaries such as the mean and standard deviations. This manipulation is often found when presenting information to a jury. November 9, 1999, Sally Clark was convicted for the murder of her two children, Christopher and Harry (Bacon). Christopher’s death was first deemed a result of Sudden Death in Infancy or SUDI. Yet, when a second child died just over a year later, the medical examiner became suspicious of the second child’s death and then the first.
At court, the prosecutor called a medical professional to the stand. The professional stated that, in Clark’s situation (factors such as presence of smokers in the household, mother’s age, and presence of a wage-owner in the household), one case of the SUDI was fairly rare, roughly at 1 out of every 9,000, but acceptable. Yet without knowing all causes of SUDI, the medical professional claimed the two deaths were independent events and thus, the likelihood dwindled down to a measly 1 in 73 million.
With such a minute chance that SUDI was the cause of death, the jury set their sight to murder. On Clark’s second attempt at an appeal, this error was brought to light. Since the causes of SUDI was unknown, the professional had no right to say the two deaths were independent of each other. This change in statistics leads an innocent defendant to a path of suspicion. Thus, the individual’s perspective is integral when observing the presentation of information used to pursue knowledge.
Furthermore, though statistics uses a systematic language in the presentation of data, sense perception can alter the observer’s interpretation of the information, leading to varying results or a misconstrued perspective. Back to Sally Clark, the prosecution framed their arguments on what is known as the Prosecutor’s Fallacy, a statistical reasoning stating that the defendant is guilty because the innocent explanation is highly improbable. With a warped presentation, the jury is only presented with two options, murder or an extremely rare natural death.
With the probability of SUDI so minuscule, little evidence would be needed to turn the jury over to the possibility of murder. Yet, after the death occurred, the question shouldn’t have been, “What is the possibility of two cases of SUDI? ” but rather, “Are natural deaths more probable than murder? ” During Clark’s appeal, Clark’s team called Professor Dawid, an expert on infanticide. His study revealed that the probability with 2 babies in one family being murdered was 1 out of 2. 15 billion families. By the second appeal, the case lost sufficient evidence to convict Clark.
Here, knowledge gained by the jury did not reside in mathematics, but rather, mathematics was used to alter the jury’s perception when pursuing knowledge. Mathematics seem inherently unbiased in nature, yet it is still at the mercy of the author’s presentation and the observer’s discretion to judge the information and its use in the pursuit of knowledge. Researchers studying under the Natural Sciences would have a tendency to follow the strict standards of Bacon’s Scientific Method. Through sense perception and reason, these scientists obtain knowledge by collecting experimental data and finding a logical conclusion.
In 1543, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium or On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Astronomer, Nicholas Copernicus, was published, detailing Copernicus’ revelations on the heliocentric theory (Rabin). In his discourse, Copernicus scribes his journey in the pursuit of knowledge; while working with the geocentric theory, Copernicus formulated the hypothesis that the planets circled around the Sun. From there, he gathered data through observation and analyzed it, allowing him to confirm his hypothesis. Because he was an astronomer, Copernicus used the scientific approach in his pursuit of knowledge.
Though credited with the heliocentric theory, Copernicus at that time was met with rejection from the scientific community as well as the masses. This can also be attributed to the knower’s perspectives. This brings up the knowledge question, “Does the area of knowledge affect society’s acceptance of the knowledge? ” Since, for them, the knowledge of the Sun in reference to the Earth resided in the Religious Knowledge System, Copernicus’ claim did not compete against the Church’s authority. So, to what extend do authoritative sources play a role in the development of knowledge?
With the Church dominating shared knowledge, Copernicus’ ideas were squeezed into the closet, hidden from the masses. The Church affirmed that the Earth was placed promptly in the middle, referring to religious texts and past authoritative figures like Aristotle. Like the Church, those who reside within the Religious Knowledge Systems tend to extract knowledge from religious texts or accept the knowledge from higher religious figures through faith. On November 1978, over 900 members of the People’s Temple of the Disciples of Christ (more commonly referred to as the Kool Aid Cult) committed mass suicide under Jim Jones (“Jonestown”).
Near death, Jones refused to believe that anyone else could lead the commune. As news spread about Jones’ condition, the followers sought for any clue on what to do next. Jones told his followers that the only solution was to kill themselves as well. Jones was a religious figure to his followers so, in this search for knowledge, they faithfully accepted his personal knowledge. The Kool Aid cult was a Religious Knowledge System and therefore relied on their faith towards religious figures when pursuing knowledge. The knower’s perspective can affect his/her conclusions while pursuing knowledge.
The knower’s memories or personal stance will bias the results. What is the effect of bias on knowledge? One bias, confirmation bias, occurs when the one pursuing knowledge searches for or misinterprets data to confirm his/her prior conceptions. Thus, the knowledge the knower attempts to pursuing may be misconstrued or be invalid knowledge. In the documentary, Psychic Investigation, a research experiment is held in Russia to confirm a renowned psychic’s power (Psychic Investigation). How does the indigenous knowledge of a society impact what is perceived as true?
In Russia, psychics are more widely accepted than in America. When the Russians attempted to confirm the psychic’s power, the scientists proudly stated that the psychic wasn’t a fake. To test this, the scientists randomly tested a combination of his two “powers,” increasing mental simulation and increasing blood pressure. After fifteen minutes, the scientists would study the readings to discern if his powers were real. However, when repeated by James Randi, retired stage magician who is skeptical of paranormal claims, the results were only correct ? imes, a lucky coincidence.
The difference between the Russian’s experiment and Randi’s was that Randi held a double blind experiment. The same scientists that confirmed the psychic’s power the first time were used in Randi’s experiment but, this time, was not given the knowledge of which power was put to the test: raising blood pressure, stimulating the mind, both, or nothing at all. Without the information of what was changed each trial, the scientists did not have a preconceived notion of what the results was supposed to indicate and thus no confirmation bias.
A knower’s prior memories set him/her up with a personal bias towards or against the subject he/she is trying to pursue. The knower’s perspective can also motivate or inhibit the pursuit of knowledge. In the events following World War II, mounds of data flooded countries like the US containing detailed accounts of Nazi experimentation. Through language and propaganda, Hitler was able to shift Germany’s indigenous knowledge so that the Jews’ lives did not matter (Wilkerson). Germany’s ethical system did not care that the scientists were experimenting on human life.
However, after the war, the boxes of data were left sealed in their respective boxes. Though the Nazi’s percieved the Jewish lives to be insignificant, the Americans believed that the Nazi experiments were a breach in their ethics. Even now, Americans still do not read through Nazi experimentation in fears that the knowledge they find will justify Nazi experimentation. As a part of the knower’s perspective, the knower’s memories of the horrors the Nazis enacted inhibits him/her from pursuing the knowledge within the boxes.
The knower’s perspective is an integral part of the pursuit in knowledge in this case because it inhibits the knower from doing so. A knower’s perspective is extremely important when pursuing knowledge because it affects the methods the knower will take to obtain knowledge. The knower’s perspective includes the Area of Knowledge he/she works under, past memories, and personal/shared bias. Though the knower’s perspective can reveal the tendency of a person to pursue knowledge with a certain method, it can not accurately account for every situation.
