DISTINGUISHING THE SCIENCES: FOR NURSING

Nursing is a practice discipline as are politics and morality. Further, each participates in significant systematic inquiry into the nature, meaning and execution of its activities. However, a question arises about the nature of these investigations. Are they truly scientific inquiries? Does their scope of inquiry encompass a truly universal realm? If they are not sciences, in what way can the knowledge generated be understood to be generalizable and thus useful in a v ariety of situations? If they are sciences, in what is found the ground or source of the universality and certainty of their findings? This article will explore this problem and suggest that, in fact, there are several kinds of nursing science. Following the lead of Jacques Maritain and Yves R. Simon, I will begin with an account of the distinguishing characteristics of theoretical knowledge, to which the term “science” has historically been applied, and distinguish it from practical knowledge or prudence. This discussion offers a guide for our investigation. Next I will review Maritain and Simon’s discussion of two intermediate levels of inquiry that share some characteristics of both science and practical knowledge. Finally, using the writings of several nurse theorists whose seminal ideas in this area have established a basis for nurse theorist’s discussion of these issues, I will distinguish four kinds of nursing inquiry which range from the very theoretical to the very practical. It is hoped that this discussion will lay the groundwork for a more nuanced account of the science and methods necessary to answer the varied kinds of questions that arise in nursing theory and practice. It also suggests a philosophical foundation for these accounts. Yves R. Simon spent much of his career investigating the meaning and kinds of scientific and practical inquiry and applying the results of this