Coenoscopic and Ideoscopic Knowledge

The terms as proposed have a Greek etymological root, “coenoscopic” meaning  “directly viewed”, as in unaided sense perception; “ideoscopic” meaning  “specially viewed”, as in observation enhanced by instruments and controlled  experimentation.  

 

And of course these two means of knowing are only relatively, not absolutely,  independent. Although ideoscopic knowledge logically presupposes  coenoscopic knowledge and cannot have validity if coenoscopic has no independent  validity, yet neither can coenoscopic knowledge escape being shaped and  influenced by the results obtained by ideoscopy. We can all see as a matter of  coenoscopy that the sun revolves around the earth.Yet we all know as a matter  of ideoscopy that it is rather the earth that moves relative to the sun. The core  foundation of the perceptions is a relative motion between sun and earth: this  coenoscopy certainly attains. But that the relativity is earth to sun rather than  the apparent sun to earth would never be known were it not for ideoscopy. That  mistakes are always possible, however (fallibilism being the basic condition of  human knowledge, after all), does not invalidate the distinction between the  two types of knowledge and the foundational character that coenoscopy enjoys  respecting the ideoscopic development that we know as science in the modern  sense.

John Deely 'Purely Objective Reality' (2009)