ABSTRACT
A theoretical chapter that puts research in the learning sciences in the context of contemporary views about knowledge and knowing. Topics include: the key features of science and their metaphysical underpinnings, social science as positivism, Comte’s hierarchy of the sciences, Popper’s critical rationalism, critiques of science for its Eurocentrism and the eugenics movement, and the “post” discourses. After this broad exploration the learning sciences is reconsidered as a field, building on the introduction in Chapter 1.
