| The topic on the relation between knowledge and power is very ancient and sensitive, it was already brought into the knowledge theory during ancient Greece times. Knowledge, power and the relation between them has been through constant evolution with human society’s tremendous change from primitive society, slave society and feudal society to capitalist society. In pre-science age, knowledge was the symbol of power. It’s so luxury that was possessed and controlled by the nobles. Therefore, the witchcraft, superstition and religion got a chance to play the role of belief among common people. At the later stage of18th century, with the rise of science, emergence of scientists and science system, science was attached unprecedented importance. Science especially natural science which became a typical symbol of truth, was the only absolutely correct knowledge not influenced by anything else.The structure of scientific revolution by Thomas Samuel Kuhn broke this scientific myth. It reformed the science into a social activity which could be observed and studied, as well as a mystery-solving activity in the field of faith. Then, a large number of sociologists and historians of science broke off the forbidden zone. They studied science in scientific ways and found out that natural and social science were both influenced by society, history and culture, the concept of knowledge from relativism challenged the one from objectivity.The traditional power has been tied with violence, status and wealth all the time. In early stage of human society, the violence was power, the more violent they could be, the more power they have. When it came to slave and feudal society, power was given by status and wealth, whoever could have power if they possessed status and wealth. The reality was wealth’s power exceeded violence’s. Since the wealth was so flexible that could be used to threaten, punish and also reward people. Foucault (Discipline and punish) criticized that power remains anchored in macrostructures and ruling class. He also thought that power is modern oppressive theory. In this book a productive model of microcosmic power scattering over prisons, hospitals or labs was put forward which overturned some modern mainstream model of power such as juridical model and economistic model. It’s not necessary to use human flesh or law to use power. But it needed the aid of the standards with hegemony, political techniques and creation of flesh and soul. With the development of knowledge and specialized division of science, the power in modern society is given by knowledge. Knowledge could be used to punish, reward and even persuade and transform an enemy into a friend. In addition, knowledge also could be used as a value-added device for violence and wealth. Consequently, the power which takes knowledge’s application as the essence exceeds the one that takes violence and wealth as the essence. In this way, gradually, knowledge and power work together through alliance, or people contend for academic power, unlike it was only controlled by the nobility in the past.In the contemporary era, science changes its direction to linguistics. Scientific knowledge becomes one kind of speech which changes the function of knowledge obtaining and dissemination. Knowledge itself gets a sudden change too like its quantization, operability and commercialization. Then the exchange value of knowledge becomes its goal. Scientists go through internal split because of different professional backgrounds, sincerity, employments and supports. Knowledge’s general authority collapses. As a result, the most important power is not the experts’ but some specific scientists or power which is trusted. Starting from history and theory, we study knowledge, power and the relation between them especially scientific knowledge. Also we study the change of the relation between knowledge and power caused by the concept’s change of knowledge and power. A dynamic complementary theory is put forward and discussed in the terms of homology, complementary and unity. |
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