ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the concepts of positionality, knowledge and truth and their contextual significance in the world. The complex ambiguity of the interrelationship between truth and reality is explored, alongside the rich history of the metaphysical thinkers of the Middle Ages, when medievalists advocated that the concept of truth was all transcending. How approaches to evidence-based practice now shape and define modern-day applied praxis in some disciplines is explored, alongside how the semantic meaning of “ways of knowing” now define epistemology in practice. Moving through a consideration of how the sciences were impacted upon by a systemic change in European intellectual infrastructure, the discussion surrounds how the Renaissance contributed to the prevailing approach to science that actively shaped rationality and still resonates through today’s traditional approaches to empirical “knowing”. The chapter considers the concepts of truth alongside the art of representation and how mental and linguistic representation of knowledge is what encapsulates truth in practice. At the core of the chapter is the notion that all knowledge is ultimately dependent on understanding.
