The investigative approaches used by science are viewed, by many, as theauthoritative source of human knowledge in today's world. Rationalism is the reliance on pure reason or logic. Note that for Descartes the conscious 'I'precedes truth or knowledge. This is a central concept of the enlightenment. Deduction is the practice of inferring, onthe basis of necessary and sufficient evidence from a premise to aconclusion.
Induction is the practice of inferring from the specific to thegeneral.
These may beeither visual or verbal. Science and technology play an often mundane but always significant partin our day to day lives. They affect the types of homes we live in and where we live, the foodwe eat and how this is produced. They affect the way we spend our time -even the way we understand the notions of time and space and what it is tobe human. The way that we understand the world is intricately linked to theway in which we are in the world.