ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some fundamental distinctions between kinds of knowledge: understanding versus explanation, tacit versus explicit, facts versus values. It shows how to differentiate between explanation and understanding. The chapter explains subjectivity or objectivity of value judgements. It outlines the advantages of and challenges to the co-production of knowledge. Nursing, the craft of caring, should rest on knowledge because it aims to intervene in people’s lives, and interventions based on truth are more likely to succeed. Aiming at knowledge, a fusion of justified or grounded true beliefs, suggests a route to this end. Health problems are always problems of the whole person. This means that they have a biological, psychological and social dimension. In the Netherlands we have physicians who treat mainly the physical dimension, psychotherapists who treat mainly the psychological dimensions and nurses who take care of both the physical and psychological dimensions.
