I can't believe it's almost been a year since I became a father! There have been ups and downs throughout but the experience has been overwhelmingly positive. My daughter is just at the age where she can stand on her own and enjoy simple things like going to the park and social events with friends, family, and our community. I can already see her personality coming out little by little and she is, and hopefully will continue to be, a wonderful person. My first identity is now being a father, and being a scientist has shifted into my second identity. I am thankful to be a university professor since it does give me more flexibility to work from home and at least be around for parts of the day, plus I get four months off teaching, giving me more time to be with my daughter.
As a social constructivist, I believe that most knowledge is socially constructed. However, I have concluded that there are three forms of knowledge: 1) Empirical Knowledge, 2) Social Knowledge, 3) Self-actualized knowledge. Below I will briefly summarize them: 1) Empirical knowledge can be thoughts (or symbols) based on experiments or observations of nature that can describe and predict some phenomena. In principle, this type of knowledge should be generally accepted by all people, due to clear cut evidence needed to support any claims based on empirical knowledge. However there are many people that reject empirical knowledge due to having other beliefs (Self-actualized knowledge) that they feel are more “true” to them, even if there is no empirical evidence for them. By definition we are all ignorant until knowing truth, so for many people, a lack of empirical knowledge comes from the lack of interest in science or understanding the true nature of our universe. 2) Social Knowled...
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