Discuss the most effective levels of engagement that nurses can provide communities?

Discuss the most effective levels of engagement that nurses can provide communities?

The discussion must address the topic.

Rationale must be provided

400 words in your initial post by Wednesday 23:59 pm

Minimum of two scholarly references in APA format within the last five years published

Describe how the advanced practice nurse can play a role in improving the health of young adults through preventive screening and intervention.  

Discussion:

Despite increased abilities across developmental realms, including the maturation of pain systems involving self-regulation and the coordination of affect and cognition, the transition to young adulthood is accompanied by higher rates of mortality, greater engagement in health-damaging behaviors, and an increase in chronic conditions.  Rates of motor vehicle fatality and homicide peak during young adulthood, as do mental health problems, substance abuse, unintentional pregnancies, and sexually transmitted infections.

Describe how the advanced practice nurse can play a role in improving the health of young adults through preventive screening and intervention.

Instructions: 

Post your discussion to the Moodle Discussion Forum.   Word limit 500 words.   Please make sure to provide citations and references (in APA, 7th ed. format) for your work.

Reflect on an experience in which you were directly involved or witnessed incivility in the workplace.

Reflect on an experience in which you were directly involved or witnessed incivility in the workplace. Provide a brief synopsis of the situation. How did this make you feel? How did you respond? What were the consequences of this situation? Provide an example of how this negatively affected the work environment and outcomes. How could the situation have been prevented? Discuss strategies that would support a healthy work environment.

A woman went to the emergency room for severe abdominal cramping. She was diagnosed with diverticulitis; however, as a precaution, the doctor ordered a CAT scan. The CAT scan revealed a growth on the pancreas, which turned out to be pancreatic cancer—the real cause of the cramping.

  1. Analyze the subjective portion of the note. List additional information that should be included in the documentation.
  2. Analyze the objective portion of the note. List additional information that should be included in the documentation.
  3. Is the assessment supported by the subjective and objective information? Why or why not?
  4. What diagnostic tests would be appropriate for this case, and how would the results be used to make a diagnosis?
  5. Would you reject/accept the current diagnosis? Why or why not? Identify three possible conditions that may be considered as a differential diagnosis for this patient. Explain your reasoning using at least three different references from current evidence-based literature.

Abdominal assessment case study Example

Assesment 1: Assessing the Abdomen
A woman went to the emergency room for severe abdominal cramping. She was diagnosed with diverticulitis; however, as a precaution, the doctor ordered a CAT scan. The CAT scan revealed a growth on the pancreas, which turned out to be pancreatic cancer—the real cause of the cramping.
Because of a high potential for misdiagnosis, determining the precise cause of abdominal pain can be time-consuming and challenging. By analyzing case studies of abnormal abdominal findings, nurses can prepare themselves to better diagnose conditions in the abdomen.
In this assignment, you will analyze a SOAP note case study that describes abnormal findings in patients seen in a clinical setting. You will consider what history should be collected from the patients, as well as which physical exams and diagnostic tests should be conducted. You will also formulate a differential diagnosis with several possible conditions.
Abdominal Assessment

 

SUBJECTIVE:
• CC: “My stomach hurts, I have diarrhea, and nothing seems to help.”
• HPI: JR, 47 yo WM, complains of having generalized abdominal pain that started 3 days ago. He has not taken any medications because he did not know what to take. He states the pain is a 5/10 today but has been as much as 9/10 when it first started. He has been able to eat, with some nausea afterwards.
• PMH: HTN, Diabetes, hx of GI bleed 4 years ago
• Medications: Lisinopril 10mg, Amlodipine 5 mg, Metformin 1000mg, Lantus 10 units qhs
• Allergies: NKDA
• FH: No hx of colon cancer, Father hx DMT2, HTN, Mother hx HTN, Hyperlipidemia, GERD
• Social: Denies tobacco use; occasional etoh, married, 3 children (1 girl, 2 boys)
OBJECTIVE:
• VS: Temp 99.8; BP 160/86; RR 16; P 92; HT 5’10”; WT 248lbs
• Heart: RRR, no murmurs
• Lungs: CTA, chest wall symmetrical
• Skin: Intact without lesions, no urticaria
• Abd: soft, hyperactive bowel sounds, pos pain in the LLQ
• Diagnostics: None
ASSESSMENT:
• Left lower quadrant pain
• Gastroenteritis
• PLAN: This section is not required for the assignments in this course (NURS 6512) but will be required for future courses.
To prepare:
With regard to the SOAP note case study provided:
• Review this week’s Learning Resources, and consider the insights they provide about the case study.
• Consider what history would be necessary to collect from the patient in the case study.
• Consider what physical exams and diagnostic tests would be appropriate to gather more information about the patient’s condition. How would the results be used to make a diagnosis?
• Identify at least five possible conditions that may be considered in a differential diagnosis for the patient.
To complete:
1. Analyze the subjective portion of the note. List additional information that should be included in the documentation.
2. Analyze the objective portion of the note. List additional information that should be included in the documentation.
3. Is the assessment supported by the subjective and objective information? Why or Why not?
4. What diagnostic tests would be appropriate for this case and how would the results be used to make a diagnosis?
5. Would you reject/accept the current diagnosis? Why or why not? Identify three possible conditions that may be considered as a differential diagnosis for this patient. Explain your reasoning using at least 3 different references from current evidence based literature.
By Day 7

Additional Information that should be Included in the Documentation of Subjective Data

Subjective data is the information that is given to a healthcare provider from the point of view of a patient. Therefore, it includes the concerns, feelings, and perceptions that are obtained through interviews. In the scenario given, the chief complaint of the patient was that of generalized abdominal pain. Apart from asking about the intensity of the pain on a scale of 0-10, it is important to include information on the quality of the pain, whether or not it is migratory or localized, increase or decrease in severity, where it originates from and radiates to. Besides, it should be included whether the pain was of sudden or gradual onset. The patient should also be asked to explain what she was doing when the pain started. The importance of determining any aggravating or relieving factors for the pain cannot be underestimated. As supported by Oberstein & Olive (2013), this information is essential in narrowing down to some of the most probable diagnoses.

Although the patient reported about diarrhea, additional information on bowel and urinary habits should be included. This includes the duration and an approximate number of episodes of diarrhea in a day, relieving and aggravating factors, other associated symptoms for diarrhea. Information on the urinary habits such as urine incontinence, hesitancy, dysuria, urgency, and increased frequency should also be included. Still on bowel and urinary habits, information on odor, color, and discomfort after or during a bowel movement should be included. Patients with pancreatic cancer often experience darkening of urine and stool lightening (Vincent, Herman & Goggins, 2011). Potential associated symptoms of abdominal pain such as vomiting and nausea should be established.

It is clear that the patient had a history of GI bleeding 4 years ago. Therefore, information on the absence or presence of blood in vomitus or stool should be included noting the color and smell. Since she is hypertensive and diabetic on medications, information on medication adherence should be included. It is also mandatory to include information on the occupation of the patient as this would help to determine possibilities of abdominal injury.

Additional Information that Should Be Included in the Documentation of Objective Data

Following the chief complaint of generalized abdominal pain, this patient needed a detailed physical and abdominal examination. Therefore information on the patient’s general appearance should be included which may be; sick-looking, in severe pain, lethargic, noting the patient’s mental status, gait, and nutritional status. Patients with pancreatic cancer are often cachectic and malnourished.  Information on jaundice, pallor and skin pigmentation should be included. Anemia, jaundice and skin excoriation are characteristic findings in patients with pancreatic cancer (Halbrook & Lyssiotis, 2017). Jaundice may be associated with a non-tender, distended palpable gallbladder that is elicited using the Courvoisier sign, skin excoriation due to pruritus, acholic stool, and darkening of the urine.

Additional information would include may be obtained from inspection, percussion, palpation, and auscultation of the abdomen. On inspection, information on abdominal distension is necessary. In patients with pancreatic cancer, abdominal distension often acutely which is more painful. Information on the presence or absence of scars is also necessary. The presence of scars on the abdomen is an indicator for previous surgeries which would add on already available information to get a more accurate diagnosis (Ryan, Hong & Bardeesy, 2014).  Besides, information on the presence or absence of visible distended veins on inspection should be included.

On palpation, information on whether the abdomen is soft, rigid, fluid-filled, tender, non-tender guarding or with rebound tenderness should be included. In guarding, patients tighten the muscles of the abdomen. Rigidity is highly suggestive of digestive juices, blood or bowel substances in the peritoneal cavity. Masses are suggestive of an aneurysm, tumors or a bowel that is obstructed. In patients with pancreatic cancer, characteristic findings include: a palpable intra-abdominal mass, peri-umbilical mass called Sister Mary Joseph node, ascites and non-tender palpable gallbladder (Oberstein & Olive, 2013).  Information on the abdominal areas where there is increased tenderness on palpation is necessary in narrowing down to specific causes that relate to the clients clinical presentation that would guide the diagnostic, laboratory or radiological imaging studies to be conducted for the patient.

Whether the Assessment Is Supported by the Subjective and Objective Information

The assessment that is provided in this case denotes the presence of left lower quadrant pain and gastroenteritis. This assessment is fully supported by both the subjective and objective data. In the subjective data, the patient reported symptoms of diarrhea although without vomiting which is a major characteristic finding in gastroenteritis (Oberstein & Olive, 2013).  Patients with Pancreatic cancer experience diarrhea due to the inability of the pancreas to release adequate pancreatic enzymes that help in the digestion of food. Therefore, the levels of pancreatic enzymes which are naturally produced are highly insufficient for digestion, resulting to malabsorption and thereafter diarrhea (Oberstein & Olive, 2013).

The other assessment was that of pain in the left lower quadrant which is partially supported by the symptom of generalized abdominal in the subjective data and fully supported with pos pain the left lower quadrant on abdominal examination in the objective data. The abdominal organs in the left iliac fossa include the ileum, rectum, left ureter and some parts of the colon. Since the patient reported no symptoms of diarrhea, the left lower quadrant pain was as a result of gastroenteritis in this case (Ryan, Hong & Bardeesy, 2014).

Most Appropriate Diagnostic Tests for This Case and How Results Would Be Used in Making A Diagnosis

In this case, some of the most appropriate diagnostic tests that would be used to make a diagnosis include: a complete blood count and a liver function test. It would also be necessary to perform a tumor markers test. A complete blood count would reveal a normochromic anemia and thrombocytosis which are major findings in patients with pancreatic cancer. A liver function test would indicate high levels of bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase, serum amylase and lipase which are an indicator for obstructive jaundice (Hallet, et al., 2015). The most commendable tumor marker test, in this case, would be the carbohydrate antigen 19-9whereby, in the case of pancreatic cancer, would be elevated to the levels of 100U/ml from the normal range of 33-37U/ML (Ryan, Hong & Bardeesy, 2014). The highly recommended imaging study for this case is the use of CT scan rather than MRI. An abdominal CT scan is able to image the entire pelvis and abdomen. The appearance of lower-density lesions  on CT scan will support the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Whether I Would Accept/Reject the Current Diagnosis

The current diagnosis for the patient in this case is pancreatic cancer as confirmed by the CAT scan. Clinically, patients with pancreatic cancer present with signs and symptoms of gradual onset of pain in the upper abdomen which radiates to the back, yellow coloration of the skin and sclera, diarrhea, unintended weight loss, and loss of appetite (Vincent, Herman & Goggins, 2011).  Weight loss occurs as a result of the inability of the body to digest food due to a hindrance in the production of pancreatic juices for digestion of food or malabsorption that generally lead to diarrhea with stools that are greasy. The tumor also contributes to the difficulty to eat or causes discomfort after feeds (Halbrook & Lyssiotis, 2017).  With regards to jaundice, the bile duct may be blocked leading to yellow coloration of the skin, sclera, dark colored urine and pale stools. The pancreas is located in the upper quadrant of the abdomen thus, patients with pancreatic cancer will often report on upper abdominal pain as a result of the tumor pressing on the abdominal nerves (Halbrook & Lyssiotis, 2017).

In this case, the examination of the skin and abdomen revealed no significant findings such as rigidity to suggest a mass, skin changes such as yellow pigmentation to suggests obstruction, pruritus, or pallor. To add on, the patient has no medical, social or familial history that increases his risk to pancreatic cancer.  However, the patient presented with generalized abdominal pain, diarrhea and she reported that she was able to eat although with some minimal nausea afterwards. Besides, the pain was localized in the lower quadrant of the abdomen and this can be attributed to the fact that the patient was as a result of gastroenteritis. Therefore, I would accept the current diagnosis.

Possible Differential Diagnoses

Potential differential diagnoses, in this case, include: an abdominal aortic aneurysm, pancreatic lymphoma, intestinal ischemia, and gastric lymphoma. Cancer and Women’s and Men’s Health Essay Example.

 

References

Hallet, J., Law, C. H. L., Cukier, M., Saskin, R., Liu, N., & Singh, S. (2015). Exploring the rising

incidence of neuroendocrine tumors: a population‐based analysis of epidemiology, metastatic presentation, and outcomes. Cancer121(4), 589-597.

Halbrook, C. J., & Lyssiotis, C. A. (2017). Employing metabolism to improve the diagnosis and

treatment of pancreatic cancer. Cancer Cell31(1), 5-19.

Oberstein E P., & Olive O. P. K., (2013). Pancreatic cancer: why is it so hard to treat?

Therapeutic Advances in Gastroenterology 6(4):321-327.

Ryan, D. P., Hong, T. S., & Bardeesy, N. (2014). Pancreatic adenocarcinoma. New England

Journal of Medicine371(11), 1039-1049. Cancer and Women’s and Men’s Health Essay Example

Vincent A., Herman, J., & Goggins M., (2011). Pancreatic cancer. Lancet. 378(9791):607-620

To wrap up our class, pick two of the following issues (or you may choose other issues that we have discussed throughout this semester), and based on what you’ve learned, summarize the impact those issues have on children and what can be done to minimize the damage.

To wrap up our class, pick two of the following issues (or you may choose

other issues that we have discussed throughout this semester), and based on what you’ve learned, summarize the impact those issues have on

children and what can be done to minimize the damage. 250 words

• Divorce • Single Parenting • Step Families • Domestic Violence • Death of a Parent • Death of a Child • Addiction • Taking care of Elderly Parents

Please also share a few “take-away” elements of the course that added to

your understanding of Family Development. (Be thorough, thoughtful, and specific in your post.)Think about what stood out to you during the semester.

This assignment requires you to create a narrated PowerPoint presentation that applies research in developmental psychology to a practical problem during a specific stage in the lifespan.

PSYC 525

Developmental Psychology Presentation Assignment Instructions

Overview

Description: This assignment requires you to create a narrated PowerPoint presentation that applies research in developmental psychology to a practical problem during a specific stage in the lifespan.

Purpose: In the science of developmental psychology, scholars conduct research in both basic and applied settings. In fact, one of the more important reasons for engaging in developmental research is the application of findings to practical problems. This assignment will allow you to practice applying empirical research to help resolve a practical issue in human development. As a secondary goal, the assignment will give you experience with verbal presentation, which is a key lifelong professional skill.

Instructions

Details:

1. Select a topic.

a. Pick an issue/problem that is interesting to you (e.g., bullying, character development, job burnout, etc.).

b. Focus on 1 developmental stage (e.g., early/middle/late childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, etc.).

2. Locate 5 empirical studies in peer-reviewed journals that address the issue identified above.

3. Create and narrate the presentation (see format below).

4. Students may choose the same topic and use the same material from the research paper submitted for Week 6 but must address practical problems for this assignment, which might require further research.

Format:

1. Include a title slide, content slides as needed, and a reference slide.

2. Avoid placing too many words on a slide (no more than 50 words).

3. Start by thinking about what you want to accomplish in your 10 minutes. Make a list of your presentation goals, and then subdivide the goals into relevant components. Have modest goals; you do not need to tie up the untidy details in the research literature. Introduce your listeners to the topic, take them to a moderate depth of understanding, engage them, and leave them wanting to know more.

4. For the introduction, be sure to set up the importance of this particular issue, situating it briefly in context.

5. For the body, explain the issue and how the research informs/addresses the issue. Provide key details (not overwhelming the listener with too many details).

6. For the conclusion, summarize your analysis and note the practical implications/applications.

7. After creating the slides, narrate the slides as you would if you were standing in front of an audience. If you need help narrating the slides, there are many tutorials online.

8. The presentation must be 10–12 minutes.

9. Current APA standards must be followed

 

Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.

Developmental Psychology Presentation Assignment Instructions

PSYC 525

Developmental Psychology Presentation Assignment Instructions

Overview

Description: This assignment requires you to create a narrated PowerPoint presentation that applies research in developmental psychology to a practical problem during a specific stage in the lifespan.

Purpose: In the science of developmental psychology, scholars conduct research in both basic and applied settings. In fact, one of the more important reasons for engaging in developmental research is the application of findings to practical problems. This assignment will allow you to practice applying empirical research to help resolve a practical issue in human development. As a secondary goal, the assignment will give you experience with verbal presentation, which is a key lifelong professional skill.

Instructions

Details:

1. Select a topic.

a. Pick an issue/problem that is interesting to you (e.g., bullying, character development, job burnout, etc.).

b. Focus on 1 developmental stage (e.g., early/middle/late childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, etc.).

2. Locate 5 empirical studies in peer-reviewed journals that address the issue identified above.

3. Create and narrate the presentation (see format below).

4. Students may choose the same topic and use the same material from the research paper submitted for Week 6 but must address practical problems for this assignment, which might require further research.

Format:

1. Include a title slide, content slides as needed, and a reference slide.

2. Avoid placing too many words on a slide (no more than 50 words).

3. Start by thinking about what you want to accomplish in your 10 minutes. Make a list of your presentation goals, and then subdivide the goals into relevant components. Have modest goals; you do not need to tie up the untidy details in the research literature. Introduce your listeners to the topic, take them to a moderate depth of understanding, engage them, and leave them wanting to know more.

4. For the introduction, be sure to set up the importance of this particular issue, situating it briefly in context.

5. For the body, explain the issue and how the research informs/addresses the issue. Provide key details (not overwhelming the listener with too many details).

6. For the conclusion, summarize your analysis and note the practical implications/applications.

7. After creating the slides, narrate the slides as you would if you were standing in front of an audience. If you need help narrating the slides, there are many tutorials online.

8. The presentation must be 10–12 minutes.

9. Current APA standards must be followed

 

Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.

Science and Social Progress in Classical Positivism

1. Science and Social Progress in Classical Positivism

The origins of science date back to the 6th century BC when the pre-Socratic philosophers (later followed by other prominent ones such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the 5th and 4th centuries BC) attempted for the first time to discover the guiding principles of the world, the so-called “metaphysics.” The Greek pre-Socratic philosophers, among whom Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, are largely responsible for the transition in Western thought. From “myth” to “logos,” the Greek term for “reason” – a radical shift that involved abandoning hitherto common theological or supernatural explanations of the world and seeking and proposing rational, logical explanations instead. From that point on, the study of the world through logical reasoning or “philosophy” (or in Greek, “the love of wisdom”) is on the march, and the related “logo-centrism” (the belief that the pursuit of “pure reason” leads to the discovery of the underlying substance of the world) predominates. The Middle Ages, i.e., the Western history between ancient times (both Greek and Roman) and the modern era, are strongly marked by a movement known as “scholasticism.” Between the 11th and 14th centuries, the scholastics attempted to combine theology and philosophy. The most widely known combinations were the 13th-century synthesis of Christian faith and Aristotelian metaphysics as interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Medieval research of the world was generally conducted within monasteries and later expanded to other more appropriate venues: the first universities were created in Italy, England, and France in the late 11th and 12th centuries. However, the first university founded dates to the 5th century when a center of learning in philosophy, astronomy, and other subjects was established in Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey); formally founded in the 9th century, the university of Constantinople lasted until the 14th century.

 

The post-medieval period, spanning from the 16th century to the present times, is Modernity. Since the scientific method was first proposed in this period, earlier world investigations are considered “pre-scientific.” The scientific method consists of the principles necessary for conducting (scientific) research, namely, observation or experimentation of phenomena; formulation of hypotheses about the Metatheories in the phenomena under study through “induction” (i.e., “the passage from the particular to the general”); tests to demonstrate the truth or falsity of the proposed hypotheses, through “deduction” (i.e., “the passage from the general to the particular”); and, finally, verification or the need to modify hypotheses.

Generally rooted in the empiricist tradition, thus privileging quantitative research methods and techniques, the scientific method is first employed in the natural sciences and then massively appropriated by social scientists. Modernity includes at least two distinct eras: the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, some historians take the First Age as part of the second. The Age of Reason marks the end of the Middle Ages, during which faith commands reason and imposes a scholastic stamp on world knowledge. Rationalism prevails (i.e., the belief that reason rather than experience is the primary source of knowledge), expounded by prominent philosophers such as René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. Rationalist positions are later challenged by empiricism, the hallmark of the Age of Enlightenment. The leading empiricists (namely John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume) assert that everything that can be known results only from human sensory experience.

The absolute idealists wrote as if the Renaissance methodologists of the sciences had never existed. But if the empirical and scientific tradition in philosophy in Germany was dormant in France and England in the mid-19th century, it was very much alive. Auguste Comte wrote his great philosophical history of science, The Positive Philosophy, in six volumes in France. Influenced by Bacon and the entire school of British empiricism, by the doctrine of progress presented by Turgot and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-94) during the 18th century, and by the highly original social reformer Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Comte called his philosophy positivism. Comte meant to have a philosophy of science so narrow as to deny any validity to knowledge not derived through the accepted methods of science.

In this work, Comte made his point not by dialectics but by appealing to the history of thought Burawoy, M. (2005).

 

Source: National Library of Paris

Auguste Comte

His two basic ideas were:

· The notion that the sciences have arisen in strict order, beginning with mathematics and astronomy, followed by physics, chemistry, and biology, and culminating in the new science of sociology, to which Comte was the first to ascribe the name.

· The so-called “law of the three stages” considers that thought in all fields passes progressively from superstition to science by being first religious, then abstract or metaphysical, and finally positive or scientific.

Comte’s contribution was to initiate an anti-religious and anti-metaphysical bias in the philosophy of science that survived into the 20th century. In mid-19th century England, John Stuart Mill was the leading representative of the empiricist tradition from Bacon to Hume. Mill’s theory of knowledge, best represented in his Examination of the Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton (1865), was not particularly original but rather a reasonable combination of the doctrines of Berkeley and Hume; it symbolized his distrust of vague metaphysics, his denial of the a priori element in knowledge, and his determined opposition to any form of intuitionism. It is in his enormously influential A System of Logic (1843). However, Mill’s main theoretical ideas are to be found.

 

John Stuart Mill

Source: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

He indicates that the work on the principles of evidence and methods of scientific investigation was less concerned with formal logic than with scientific methodology. Mill here made the fundamental distinction between deduction and induction, defined induction as the process of discovering and proving general propositions, and presented his “four methods of experimental investigation” as the heart of the inductive method. These methods were, in fact, just an expanded and refined version of Francis Bacon’s “tables of discovery.” But the most significant section of a logic system was its conclusion, Book VI, On the Logic of the Moral Sciences.

Although rationalism is opposed in principle to empiricism, one needs to recognize that empiricist philosophers are neither totally against the use of reason nor do they fail to deploy reason (when necessary) in investigations of the world. The basis of empiricist philosophy, however, lies earlier when Francis Bacon first proposed the “inductive method” through which one can arrive at universal statements about the world by resorting to multiple observations and experiments and thus discovering “regularities of events” or “constant conjunctions of events.” The 19th century witnessed the development of “idealism” and “positivism.” These two philosophies elaborate on rationalist and empiricist views, respectively. While the idealism postulated by Georg Hegel and others holds that the world is composed of ideas (i.e., the world exists primarily as human consciousness or spirit), the positivism of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill emphasizes sensory perceptions as the sole sources of knowledge. Idealism is a reaction to the materialist position that the world is matter, essentially physical Burawoy, M. (2005).

 

II. The Sociology of Science

With distant antecedents in Marx, Engels, and Durkheim and, more recently, in Merton and other authors, the sociology of science has been developed, which complements, in various aspects, the treatment of these disciplines by epistemology. Bunge, who has also written on that subject, refers, controversially in some qualifications, to different currents occurring in the sociology of science, as can be seen in the quote below: “New orientations in the sociology of science have been emerging since the 1960s. Although the respective styles represent considerable differences, they adhere to several shared dogmas. These are externalism, a thesis in whose terms the conceptual content is determined by the social frame of reference; constructivism or subjectivism, according to which the research subject constructs not only his own version of the facts but also the facts themselves and eventually the whole world; relativism, for which there are no objective and universal truths; pragmatism, which emphasizes action and interaction at the expense of ideas and identifies science with technology; ordinaries, which reduces scientific research to pure, uninspired transpiration, refusing to recognize science as having a special status and to distinguish it from ideology, pseudoscience and even anti-science; the adoption of obsolete psychological doctrines, such as behaviorism and psychoanalysis, and the replacement of positivism, rationalism and other classical philosophies by a multitude of philosophies alien to science and even anti-scientific, such as linguistic philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, “critical theory”, post-structuralism, deconstructivism, or the French school of semiotics, as the case may be.

III. Women, Artists, Workers, and Secular Education

The first friendly civil servants, working-class educators, will be women of the bourgeoisie who seek to improve their lives, guided by the spirit of utilitarianism (Moix: 1991, 57), which pursues the greatest good of the greatest number. The role of women in the 19th century is also an important reference to understanding the context in which social work was born. Her role in society, the distribution of power, and the spaces of the two sexes will configure a presence of women in a society that is subsidiary to the individual, expelled from public life, and whose importance, both in production and social reproduction, is not sufficiently valued. Farge (1991) points out that women are characterized in this period by being subjected: the product of their work falls to their legal guardian, and procreation is subject to the control of the community. They are considered weak, so perhaps the first legislation on working conditions is directed at them and their children, which does not prevent their work from remaining hard. They are seen as irresponsible. Their sphere of power is limited to the domestic sphere, where their presence is experienced as an intrusion. In this space, the socialization of sons and daughters will occur and, therefore, social reproduction. The only thing that changes, according to Farge, is that women begin to develop a public presence that was previously the exclusive domain of men.

Germany takes the form of true social motherhood. In this case, bourgeois women help, educate and control poor and working-class women. They pass at the impulse of associations, from being visitors of the poor to benevolent inspectors, from protective ladies to social assistants, precursors of the social workers. In the same way, doctors made women their allies in the fight for hygiene.

Women were gradually incorporated into social life, with social assistance being one of the privileged fields. Their presence in their work extends the expressive roles in the domestic sphere, which they reproduce in the public sphere. It can also be seen how the precursor movement of social work was born in the upper class. Apart from serving to justify women before society is used as a control mechanism of which the working class is wary, as it had previously been wary of other aid mechanisms developed by society.

As a precursor of social work, social assistance was born out of a reformist desire from the social elites, far from the incipient social state and without participation in the debate on social sciences.

IV. Durkheim and Bunge: Objectivity and Subjectivity

A particular dualism prevalent in current sociocultural theory is that of objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity is an omniscient, neutral, and detached theoretical perspective concerning a given attribute or set of attributes. The objective courtroom judge has no reason to favor the defendant or plaintiff, and the objective journalist includes no judgment bias in reporting an event. On the other hand, subjectivity is the opposite condition of being situated within feelings and opinions.

The situated nature of perception, i.e., subjectivity or objectivity, is a crucial qualifier of human experience. Indeed, it is one of the most widely recognized and researched fields of psychological inquiry, particularly considering Jaques Lacan’s theory of “the mirror stage.” In this developmental period, Lacan asserts, an individual reconciles the tension of having an image projected in a mirror separate from the experienced physical self. Eventually, the individual recognizes the singular body as a simultaneous subject and object in the presence of a mirror. Although this stage marks the first time a person is confronted with this perceptual dualism, it remains a tension throughout their life. The shortcomings of Cash’s (1990) account of the relationship between taxation and body image represent his sharp analytic division of objectivity and subjectivity. He dismisses their simultaneous effects on bodily perception. He argues that the experience of body image can be “neatly divided” into two different perspectives of objectivity and subjectivity, or a “view from the outside” vs. a “view from the inside.” This is a reductionist analysis because the two are inseparable. The view from the inside profoundly affects how people perceive others and see them and vice versa. Moreover, no one can achieve an utterly isolated objective or subjective view because no one can escape their perception. No one can exist without receiving others’ social cues, affirmations, and denunciations (Goffman).

 

References

Gray, S. & Zide, M. (2017) Psychopathology: Competency-based assessment models for Social Workers.

Science and Social Progress in Classical Positivism

1. Science and Social Progress in Classical Positivism

The origins of science date back to the 6th century BC when the pre-Socratic philosophers (later followed by other prominent ones such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the 5th and 4th centuries BC) attempted for the first time to discover the guiding principles of the world, the so-called “metaphysics.” The Greek pre-Socratic philosophers, among whom Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, are largely responsible for the transition in Western thought. From “myth” to “logos,” the Greek term for “reason” – a radical shift that involved abandoning hitherto common theological or supernatural explanations of the world and seeking and proposing rational, logical explanations instead. From that point on, the study of the world through logical reasoning or “philosophy” (or in Greek, “the love of wisdom”) is on the march, and the related “logo-centrism” (the belief that the pursuit of “pure reason” leads to the discovery of the underlying substance of the world) predominates. The Middle Ages, i.e., the Western history between ancient times (both Greek and Roman) and the modern era, are strongly marked by a movement known as “scholasticism.” Between the 11th and 14th centuries, the scholastics attempted to combine theology and philosophy. The most widely known combinations were the 13th-century synthesis of Christian faith and Aristotelian metaphysics as interpreted by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Medieval research of the world was generally conducted within monasteries and later expanded to other more appropriate venues: the first universities were created in Italy, England, and France in the late 11th and 12th centuries. However, the first university founded dates to the 5th century when a center of learning in philosophy, astronomy, and other subjects was established in Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey); formally founded in the 9th century, the university of Constantinople lasted until the 14th century.

 

The post-medieval period, spanning from the 16th century to the present times, is Modernity. Since the scientific method was first proposed in this period, earlier world investigations are considered “pre-scientific.” The scientific method consists of the principles necessary for conducting (scientific) research, namely, observation or experimentation of phenomena; formulation of hypotheses about the Metatheories in the phenomena under study through “induction” (i.e., “the passage from the particular to the general”); tests to demonstrate the truth or falsity of the proposed hypotheses, through “deduction” (i.e., “the passage from the general to the particular”); and, finally, verification or the need to modify hypotheses.

Generally rooted in the empiricist tradition, thus privileging quantitative research methods and techniques, the scientific method is first employed in the natural sciences and then massively appropriated by social scientists. Modernity includes at least two distinct eras: the Age of Reason and the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, some historians take the First Age as part of the second. The Age of Reason marks the end of the Middle Ages, during which faith commands reason and imposes a scholastic stamp on world knowledge. Rationalism prevails (i.e., the belief that reason rather than experience is the primary source of knowledge), expounded by prominent philosophers such as René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz. Rationalist positions are later challenged by empiricism, the hallmark of the Age of Enlightenment. The leading empiricists (namely John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume) assert that everything that can be known results only from human sensory experience.

The absolute idealists wrote as if the Renaissance methodologists of the sciences had never existed. But if the empirical and scientific tradition in philosophy in Germany was dormant in France and England in the mid-19th century, it was very much alive. Auguste Comte wrote his great philosophical history of science, The Positive Philosophy, in six volumes in France. Influenced by Bacon and the entire school of British empiricism, by the doctrine of progress presented by Turgot and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-94) during the 18th century, and by the highly original social reformer Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), Comte called his philosophy positivism. Comte meant to have a philosophy of science so narrow as to deny any validity to knowledge not derived through the accepted methods of science.

In this work, Comte made his point not by dialectics but by appealing to the history of thought Burawoy, M. (2005).

 

Source: National Library of Paris

Auguste Comte

His two basic ideas were:

· The notion that the sciences have arisen in strict order, beginning with mathematics and astronomy, followed by physics, chemistry, and biology, and culminating in the new science of sociology, to which Comte was the first to ascribe the name.

· The so-called “law of the three stages” considers that thought in all fields passes progressively from superstition to science by being first religious, then abstract or metaphysical, and finally positive or scientific.

Comte’s contribution was to initiate an anti-religious and anti-metaphysical bias in the philosophy of science that survived into the 20th century. In mid-19th century England, John Stuart Mill was the leading representative of the empiricist tradition from Bacon to Hume. Mill’s theory of knowledge, best represented in his Examination of the Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton (1865), was not particularly original but rather a reasonable combination of the doctrines of Berkeley and Hume; it symbolized his distrust of vague metaphysics, his denial of the a priori element in knowledge, and his determined opposition to any form of intuitionism. It is in his enormously influential A System of Logic (1843). However, Mill’s main theoretical ideas are to be found.

 

John Stuart Mill

Source: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

He indicates that the work on the principles of evidence and methods of scientific investigation was less concerned with formal logic than with scientific methodology. Mill here made the fundamental distinction between deduction and induction, defined induction as the process of discovering and proving general propositions, and presented his “four methods of experimental investigation” as the heart of the inductive method. These methods were, in fact, just an expanded and refined version of Francis Bacon’s “tables of discovery.” But the most significant section of a logic system was its conclusion, Book VI, On the Logic of the Moral Sciences.

Although rationalism is opposed in principle to empiricism, one needs to recognize that empiricist philosophers are neither totally against the use of reason nor do they fail to deploy reason (when necessary) in investigations of the world. The basis of empiricist philosophy, however, lies earlier when Francis Bacon first proposed the “inductive method” through which one can arrive at universal statements about the world by resorting to multiple observations and experiments and thus discovering “regularities of events” or “constant conjunctions of events.” The 19th century witnessed the development of “idealism” and “positivism.” These two philosophies elaborate on rationalist and empiricist views, respectively. While the idealism postulated by Georg Hegel and others holds that the world is composed of ideas (i.e., the world exists primarily as human consciousness or spirit), the positivism of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill emphasizes sensory perceptions as the sole sources of knowledge. Idealism is a reaction to the materialist position that the world is matter, essentially physical Burawoy, M. (2005).

 

II. The Sociology of Science

With distant antecedents in Marx, Engels, and Durkheim and, more recently, in Merton and other authors, the sociology of science has been developed, which complements, in various aspects, the treatment of these disciplines by epistemology. Bunge, who has also written on that subject, refers, controversially in some qualifications, to different currents occurring in the sociology of science, as can be seen in the quote below: “New orientations in the sociology of science have been emerging since the 1960s. Although the respective styles represent considerable differences, they adhere to several shared dogmas. These are externalism, a thesis in whose terms the conceptual content is determined by the social frame of reference; constructivism or subjectivism, according to which the research subject constructs not only his own version of the facts but also the facts themselves and eventually the whole world; relativism, for which there are no objective and universal truths; pragmatism, which emphasizes action and interaction at the expense of ideas and identifies science with technology; ordinaries, which reduces scientific research to pure, uninspired transpiration, refusing to recognize science as having a special status and to distinguish it from ideology, pseudoscience and even anti-science; the adoption of obsolete psychological doctrines, such as behaviorism and psychoanalysis, and the replacement of positivism, rationalism and other classical philosophies by a multitude of philosophies alien to science and even anti-scientific, such as linguistic philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, “critical theory”, post-structuralism, deconstructivism, or the French school of semiotics, as the case may be.

III. Women, Artists, Workers, and Secular Education

The first friendly civil servants, working-class educators, will be women of the bourgeoisie who seek to improve their lives, guided by the spirit of utilitarianism (Moix: 1991, 57), which pursues the greatest good of the greatest number. The role of women in the 19th century is also an important reference to understanding the context in which social work was born. Her role in society, the distribution of power, and the spaces of the two sexes will configure a presence of women in a society that is subsidiary to the individual, expelled from public life, and whose importance, both in production and social reproduction, is not sufficiently valued. Farge (1991) points out that women are characterized in this period by being subjected: the product of their work falls to their legal guardian, and procreation is subject to the control of the community. They are considered weak, so perhaps the first legislation on working conditions is directed at them and their children, which does not prevent their work from remaining hard. They are seen as irresponsible. Their sphere of power is limited to the domestic sphere, where their presence is experienced as an intrusion. In this space, the socialization of sons and daughters will occur and, therefore, social reproduction. The only thing that changes, according to Farge, is that women begin to develop a public presence that was previously the exclusive domain of men.

Germany takes the form of true social motherhood. In this case, bourgeois women help, educate and control poor and working-class women. They pass at the impulse of associations, from being visitors of the poor to benevolent inspectors, from protective ladies to social assistants, precursors of the social workers. In the same way, doctors made women their allies in the fight for hygiene.

Women were gradually incorporated into social life, with social assistance being one of the privileged fields. Their presence in their work extends the expressive roles in the domestic sphere, which they reproduce in the public sphere. It can also be seen how the precursor movement of social work was born in the upper class. Apart from serving to justify women before society is used as a control mechanism of which the working class is wary, as it had previously been wary of other aid mechanisms developed by society.

As a precursor of social work, social assistance was born out of a reformist desire from the social elites, far from the incipient social state and without participation in the debate on social sciences.

IV. Durkheim and Bunge: Objectivity and Subjectivity

A particular dualism prevalent in current sociocultural theory is that of objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity is an omniscient, neutral, and detached theoretical perspective concerning a given attribute or set of attributes. The objective courtroom judge has no reason to favor the defendant or plaintiff, and the objective journalist includes no judgment bias in reporting an event. On the other hand, subjectivity is the opposite condition of being situated within feelings and opinions.

The situated nature of perception, i.e., subjectivity or objectivity, is a crucial qualifier of human experience. Indeed, it is one of the most widely recognized and researched fields of psychological inquiry, particularly considering Jaques Lacan’s theory of “the mirror stage.” In this developmental period, Lacan asserts, an individual reconciles the tension of having an image projected in a mirror separate from the experienced physical self. Eventually, the individual recognizes the singular body as a simultaneous subject and object in the presence of a mirror. Although this stage marks the first time a person is confronted with this perceptual dualism, it remains a tension throughout their life. The shortcomings of Cash’s (1990) account of the relationship between taxation and body image represent his sharp analytic division of objectivity and subjectivity. He dismisses their simultaneous effects on bodily perception. He argues that the experience of body image can be “neatly divided” into two different perspectives of objectivity and subjectivity, or a “view from the outside” vs. a “view from the inside.” This is a reductionist analysis because the two are inseparable. The view from the inside profoundly affects how people perceive others and see them and vice versa. Moreover, no one can achieve an utterly isolated objective or subjective view because no one can escape their perception. No one can exist without receiving others’ social cues, affirmations, and denunciations (Goffman).

 

References

Gray, S. & Zide, M. (2017) Psychopathology: Competency-based assessment models for Social Workers.

Provide a real-life example of informational social influences impacting a person’s decision or behavior.

Provide a real-life example of informational social influences impacting a person’s decision or behavior. Provide a real-life example of normative social influences impacting a person’s decision or behavior. Can the influence of conformity, compliance, or obedience be decreased? How would this impact the situations you identified?