Alternative Health Paradigms Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Alternative Health Paradigms - Essay Example gathering scientific knowledge but also with establishing institutions for the production of scientific knowledge free inherently from ideological biases. The technological dimension of science has been apparent in how science has bred and has interlinked with technology for economic uses and benefits. These dimensions were also temporally successive in that Western science was borne out of philosophical study which emphasized the requirement of empirical investigation and rationalization. Science in its nascent stages was more on shaping its characteristically Western attitude of objectification and reductionism; that is, scientific truths were either derived from viewing Nature as an object for man’s benefit or from the deconstructive analysis of knowledge. Subsequent philosophies of Western science shifted its focus from experimental results to experimental processes. Although Jamison did not point it out explicitly, one can infer that the institutionalization of science was borne out of the early scientific community’s shift from its study of the results of experimentation to the study of the process of experimentation. This segued into the production of knowledge by means of formulating hypothesis and carrying out the experimentation to verify and produce new kn owledge. With science out in the open, its progress escalated and the production of knowledge led to new knowledge that can be of economic advantage; Western science has thus come to where it is now – a commodity. Criticism has dogged Western science from the time of its inception and up to the present. Jamison (1994) narrowed down his analysis of the various criticisms to relevant issues pertaining to how the relativism between Western science and traditional knowledge apply to contemporary concerns. Jamison (1994) grouped the criticisms into three thematic categories: romantic critique, environmental critique, and feminist critique. The romantic critics claimed that Western science