Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

FinnWing's picture

Epistemological vs. Ingenuous Curiosity

  This was a very interesting conversation and one certainly worth delving further into.  It seems that in Freire's view,  epistemological curiosity rises naturally from ingenuous curiosity, according to Freire, "It changes in quality but not in essence" (p. 37).  I think that this is an important point, insofar as, in its purest form, the two forms of curiosity are two sides of the same coin, one more thoroughly minted than the other.  In practice though, it seems that ingenuous and epistemological curiosity often deviate from one another. 

  An example of this, fresh in my mind, is how results of acupuncture are treated by the western medical establishment.  Acupuncture, and its benefits, are gauged in a similar way to pharmaceuticals.  There is an implicit assumption that the relative quality is fairly stable between certified practitioners, however, in practice this is often not the case.  Thus to study acupuncture as effective or ineffective is heavily influenced by the practitioner, just as the quality of music depends on the musician.  In this way, the ingenuous curiosity, or "common sense," tells us that an individual acupuncturist and acupuncturee achieve an unique result.  Yet, in epistemological curiosity, the assumption is made that the results are going to be "close enough" to study on a large scale.  Whether this is correct or incorrect I don't know, but I certainly think that it is worth thinking about how epistemological curiosity can deviate from Freire's ideal when both the quality and essence of the investigation are altered.   

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
5 + 10 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.