New Understanding Of Rouse's View Of Scientific Knowledge/power

Since the Renaissance, both scientism and humanism have developed rapidly and have driven the progress of society together. Although scientism and humanism were once in a split, they are now moving towards harmony.As we know, the development and progress of human society need both scientific culture and human culture, both of which are essential. Material and spiritual civilization is an important sign of social progress. The improvement of living standards relies on scientific and technological progress while spiritual civilization depends mainly on the influence of human culture. So scientific culture and human culture are two pillars of social progress. From another perspective, scientific culture and human culture promote mutually and drive social progress together. In the early period of Renaissance, the thought of humanism promoted the emergence and rapid development of modern science. Later, it was due to the development of science, and the increase of knowledge, that people were capable of being aware of that importance of logos and nonexistence of God. The Renaissance inspired people and made them realize the correctness and greatness of humanism, which the most valuable heritage it left for us.Since the 20th century, socialization of science has developed and found its shadow in all areas and departments of society. The integration of Natural science and social science is essentially the practice combining both scientism and humanism. The development of science and technology is interdependent and inseparable with people's values and social needs. This has become the important factor that scientism and humanism ultimately go towards integration and coordinated development. The situation that science becomes more socialized and society becomes more scientific indicates that the amalgamation of scientism and humanism is the inevitable trend of social development. Since the mid-20th century, new scientific practice has promoted the interaction of philosophy of science, sociology of science and politics of science. While animadverting on logic empiricism, Kuhn gave due attention to the relations between science and politics and sociology, concerning the effects of science on politics and society and vice versa. Meanwhile, concepts of knowledge and power went through changes as well, particularly on the interaction of knowledge and power, where some now ideas emerged, a fact that makes it possible to reveal the relations of knowledge and power.In virtue of views of knowledge, it is believed that scientific knowledge was the correct representation to objective world in knowledge representationalism. Through research, it is not difficult to find the objective world existing independent of the surface of our existence. How can we make our representation of objective world more precisely? How to make sure that one scientific theory is more advanced than another? To both two questions, knowledge view of representationalism cannot provide a satisfactory solution. So People turned to the practical dimensions and the research emphasis on the issue turned from representation to practice, from know-thee to be know-how, which made up the trend of scientific research thereafter. In "Representation and intervention", Ian Hacking pointed out that "We cannot limit ourselves to understand science as the representation of nature, and look at theory, proposition and name only; science is an activity of practice, the interference and intervention into the material."Meanwhile, the concept of power has also undergone through changes. In "discipline and punishment" and "sexual history", Michel Foucault presented a new view of power. It was different from traditional political power. We called it "micro power", which is the typical characteristic of modem form of power.Evidently, traditional views on knowledge and power are not capable to explain contemporary scientific practice. It is necessary to examine again knowledge, power and their interactive relations. Rouse's thought about scientific knowledge / power just emerged from such a context.The theory of knowledge / power proposed by Rouse, an American philosopher of science, merged scientific knowledge and power. This theory is a typical example which combines scientific culture and human culture and is of great significance.