Communication I: Basic Contexts at Work

Fundamentally, all forms of knowledge in academic disciplines such as traditional philosophy, social science, industrial relations, management studies, etc. are a reflection of reason embodied in cognition, communication, and action. With Enlightenment and modernity, rationality and reason became the core of all scientific enquiries.56 No longer were scientific endeavours based on religious belief-systems. Modernity linked rationality and reason to the scientific endeavour of proven knowledge. Under modernity, advances in reasoning and scientific knowledge took place primarily inside a communicative framework. This new framework of communication among scientists led to tremendous developments in the understanding of the modern world. Inside this framework science has been generally and universally applied. In other words, today’s understanding of the world including scientific knowledge has always been part of a universal form of knowledge. Without universality, thought would be a private, non-committal affair, incapable of understanding the smallest sector of existence. Thought is always more and other than individual thinking (Marcuse 1966:142). Such non-private and universal thought, knowledge, and reason have set universal parameters in human communication. Today universally agreed forms of human communication are conducted through universal sets of principles that guide human engagement and human conduct as set out in the universal declaration of human rights which is accepted worldwide and commonly agreed upon.