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“Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.” – Dr. Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters (1984) on the perils of crossing the streams.
Ghostbusters (1984). In this classic 1980s movie – if there is such a thing –, the scientists invent a device to catch ghosts. However, there is a danger if the energy streams emitted by these devices cross. Crossing the streams risks complete “protonic reversal.” (Image Credit: 2011 Sony Pictures Digital Inc.)
While you probably won’t instantaneously burst into nothingness if you “cross the streams” of different ways of knowing, it could give you a headache, and you would risk falling into the intellectual traps that have been laid out in this Module. Here at IUPUI (PULs), the Academic Affairs Committee stresses that you should be able to show knowledge and understanding of at least one field of study (i.e., your major), to compare and contrast approaches to knowledge in different disciplines, and to modify your approach to an issue or problem based on the contexts and requirements of a particular situation. In other words, you should be able to demonstrate that you now different ways of knowing exist and that they function differently (although, not always independently). Hopefully, you are able to see that this understanding isn’t just important because it’s an academic pursuit; it’s also important because it helps us to use the right tools for the right job. You wouldn’t use a hammer to flip a burger, in the same way that you wouldn't consult a construction science engineer to tell you if you had heart disease. Those are the wrong tools for what you want to do or know.
Along the way to developing our understanding of different ways of knowing, we briefly covered four disciplines: Science, Philosophy, Theology, and Political Science. (You can literally spend your entire academic career or lifetime studying just one!) We also briefly covered Evolution and Climate Change. Topics of which there are entire classes offered here at IUPUI, BIOL-K 341: Principles of Ecology and Evolution and G130: Climate Change. When it comes to the discussion about Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Evolution, this module was not meant to make you choose one side over the other; but to see that each is a valid idea within the context of the disciplinary approach that created it. Even when it comes to our discussion of politics, the point was not to denigrate politics but to explain how it functions. Remember that each framework for creating knowledge is a valid way of knowing, but we have to remember where one ends and other begins (or risk complete “protonic reversal”).
Please complete this section by taking the assessment.