Jurgen Habermas, German sociologist and philosopher (b. 1929) held a professorship at the University of Frankfurt, suggested that reflection does not sit easily within a modern Western culture based on scientific reasoning. From this perspective, reflective activities may be seen as too subjective and not sufficiently rooted in evidence, which is considered to be a more valid effective way to find truth.
The problem exists mainly because of two potentially different view of what is ‘true’:
• Truth seen as universal (objective and rooted in evidence)
versus
• Truth seen as relative to place, time and context (subjective and rooted in social relationships).
This has led to reflection being seen as either:
• A systematic process of enquiry and problem solving, or
• A subjective self-reflection based on perceptions (therefore flawed).
However, Schon and others have noted that even ‘objective’ evidence-based problem-solving methods can be flawed, if a habitual routine approach fails to question and challenge the status quo. For example, a reasonable evidence-based reflection made in the 1970s would have concluded that a lack of computer skills was unlikely ever to be a serious obstacle to professional development (other than for computer scientists and programmers), whereas by 2000 it had become virtually impossible to maintain a normal domestic existence, let alone develop a career, without a good command of IT and online technology. This is an extreme example of how reliance on ‘evidence’ or ‘facts’ can produce an unreliable reflection, and also highlights how subjective reflections based on feelings can change according to mood, circumstances, time, etc.