Knowledge And Human Interests
Authors: Khoori Ahmed 
Published: December 2007

Introduction

There are many practices and interests that human beings can have including, economic, financial, social, cultural, educational etc. Knowledge and human interests starts with the premise that there are two fundamental conditions underpinning the socio-cultural system: "work" and "interaction." Work enables human beings to achieve goals and bring about material well-being through social labor. Interaction concerns securing and, expanding the possibilities for mutual understanding among all those involved in social dynamics. From these two conditions three essential human interests namely technical, practical and emancipatory can be derived:

1.1 Technical Interest

The success of work depends on the mastery over natural and social processes, hence, we have a "technical interest" in securing prediction and control.

1.2 Practical Interest

Lack of mutual understanding is just as much a threat to the reproduction of the socio-cultural form of life as is the failure to predict and control, thus we have a practical (communicative) interest in generating mutual understanding.

1.3 Emancipatory Interest

The analysis of power and the manner in which it is exercised is vital if we are to understand past and present social arrangements. The exercise of power represents a threat to both technical and communicative interests hence we must also have an "emancipatory interest" in freeing human beings from constraints imposed by power relations and to allow self-determination.

The convergence of these above mentioned three interests constitutes knowledge by which we may apprehend the society and the world in any possible way desired. These three interests represent the skeleton on which we can build a healthy and a progressive society.

A socio-cultural system based on these interests includes design of good systems, debate and emancipation, a balanced combination of which leads to entrepreneurship, innovation and change.

2. DISCUSSION

The following is a brief discussion on design, debate and emancipation, culminating into enterpreneurship, innovation and change.

2.1 Design

The concern here is to reach means-ends and is usually achieved through hard system thinking, which originates from imperical sciences (true/false) and is one of the three main human interests. The basis of interest here is to carry-out work to achieve our goals and objectives. The goal may include controlling nature, machinery, people and even nations.

In technical interest, the relationship between human and nature is mainly governed by and/or dependent on prediction and control. History tells us that our ancestors worked very hard to control nature and to use it for their individual benefit as well as that of the societies they lived in. Examples of these include, building bridges and canals to facilitate transportation of goods, dams to control floods and make use of the reservoir water during dry season.

A further example of human technical interests is the use of instrumentation, machinery and equipment for prediction and control and carrying-out some tasks, such as drilling deep oil and gas' wells, that would have been impossible without them.

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