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Positivism Vs Interpretivism

1368 Words6 Pages

Individuals are all socialised in different ways supporting our formation of knowledge and conceptualization of the environment around us. They all have different experiences and cultural upbringing, which influences our observation. This brings the concept of Interpretivism into analysis. This subsequent essay first analyses how we are socialised through our culture and prior experiences as examples. Secondly, analysis on how knowledge progresses through falsification is addressed.The last aspect which is considered is how knowledge progresses through a paradigm shift. Positivism and Interpretivism are both ideologies concerned with the nature of ontology and epistemology. Epistemology means how individuals acquire aspects and conceive knowledge. …show more content…

A paradigm is the most comprehensive framework that prescribes the rules, procedures and values informing science.It is another word for a pattern. (Jacobs & Farrell, 2001). As explained, scientific growth is a continuous process where paradigms are replaced by new ones, once the old ones are refuted. The reason why they are replaced is because a problem arises. When there is no solution, an evaluation has to take place. This period is called a crisis because this is the stage where researchers brain storm about how to solve the issue at hand and form a new paradigm. Once this solves the problem, a new paradigm is formed, called a paradigm shift. (Anonymous,[b],n.d.). It is important to analyse if any two paradigms can be compatible with one another. It is vital to define the word ‘compatible’.This word means when two views can coexist with one another. (English Dictionary and Thesaurus, n.d.). However, as mentioned above, two paradigms cannot coexist because in order for a new paradigm to be manifested, the other paradigm has to be seen as false. The new paradigm being constructed contains the problem that has been solved from the last one. An example of this is Positivism and Interpretivism. Both of these are seen to be theories that work with epistemology and ontology. However, these cannot coexist with each other because they both have opposing views on knowledge.Interpretivism believes that the problem with Positivism is that science starts with observation and that knowledge is seen as true. Interpretivism works with this problem constructing a new paradigm known asfalsificationism. This confirms that science commences with a problem and observation is used to falsify theories. These two theories, however, can be said to be commensurable because they have the same foundation which is epistemology and ontology, believing that observation yields empirical

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