Before this class began, I thought of myself as a person who tended to lean towards science as fact-based and found it hard to believe in some philosophical and religious claims that were not backed up by experimentation and evidence. Five weeks later, my views haven’t changed drastically, but have instead been developed and broadened. I now understand the importance of the philosophy of science and why philosophy and science should be interconnected. The need to question things that may appear to be factual is something I now consider more than ever crossed my mind before this course. At the beginning of the course, starting in Lecture One, we discussed the problem of knowledge and the nature of scientific knowledge. The problem of …show more content…
Examples like the theory of Plate Tectonics or the Alvarez Theory of mass extinction are cited as examples of theory acceptance and when it is appropriate. The overarching theme from Losee is that there are no rules that can objectively decide the acceptance or rejection of a new theory. This is a confusing aspect of science, but is reflected in the history of scientific discoveries and those theories we still hold to be ‘true.’ Some theories are not necessarily confirmed, but are at the very least agreed-upon from empirical observations. By Lecture Four we covered multiple conceptions of method. Method is central to the scientific enterprise. The founders of modern science were looking for an impersonal, objective basis for their knowledge claims. This was coming at a time when science was separating from religion-based belief systems. Method is crucial to determining truth and developing scientific hypotheses. Without a method in place, the goal of objectivity within science is compromised. Method is discussed throughout the entirety of Losee’s book. Losee generously discusses theory acceptance, rejection, falsification, and replacement. He aims to show the method behind these based on historical accounts in science, but as stated before, there is no set group of rules that govern this. Instead the development of hypotheses and theories that we take are integrated, comprehensive explanation of many ‘facts.’ These hypotheses and
He explains why UCTs are as popular as they are in modern society, and why people should nevertheless disregard and approach them with caution. What Keeley refers to as “virtues” are the reason for the popularity of UCTs. He gives the virtue of explanatory reach as the first and main reason for UCTs popularity, which is the account of all knowledge including errant data. This is in stark contrast to the received theory, which is imperfect by nature. This quality of UCTs is particularly attractive because it appeals to human rationality by allowing for no loopholes. Keely argues that errant data alone is not significant enough, and that a theory should never fit all of the data. This leads into one of the main points, concerning falsifiability and skepticism. Unfalsifiability is acceptable when the item or person under investigation is not actively trying to escape from the investigator. Keeley contends that the problem is not the innate unfalsifiability, but rather the increasing amount of skepticism required. Keely seeks a hole in the concept of conspiracy theories that accounts for a person’s innate sense that belief in a particular conspiracy theory is not justified. In the case of the natural sciences, falsifiability is acceptable because of the rigorous protocols in place, and therefore, we are warranted in believing scientific claims.
The development of the scientific method in the late 1500’s to the early 1600’s was a crucial stepping-stone in the science community. The scientific method is based upon observations, hypotheses and experimentation. The concept is rather simple, and can be applied to many areas of study. Once an observation is made, the observer can make a hypothesis as to why that phenomenon occurs and can then design an experiment to prove whether or not that hypotheses is valid. Although the scientific method has been extremely useful in the discovery of various things from usages of medications to studying animal behavior, there are still those who question the usage of this tool. These critics claim that since
Since the 17th century, the scientific method has served as a memorable procedure for its ability to characterize aspects of natural science. Its reliance on sense and reason allowed it to become the backbone of research for scientists, meant to make the unknown into something better understood and explored. Even still, this tried and true method cannot be deemed completely concrete. In his passage from The Great Influenza, John M. Barry utilizes various rhetorical devices in his process of characterizing scientific research, to demonstrate the similarities between scientists and the early pioneers.
The reading by William McComas covered the ten most popular myths in the world of science. Widespread believed myths such as a hypothesis being nothing more than just an educated guess and the idea that science can answer all questions were mentioned in the text. The author not only lists the ten myths but also debunks them with explanations and states that students such as myself believe most of these myths. He attributes the belief of these myths by students to a lack of science philosophy content in teacher education programs and the misguided teaching of the nature of science in high school textbooks.
I will attempt to clearly explain an argument offered by René Descartes in Rules for the Discovery of Scientific Truth. In order to accomplish this task, I will discern and explain Descartes’ argument, offer what I consider to be the most significant objection to the argument, and contemplate how Descartes would reply to my objection.
What is Science? When it comes to the word ‘science’ most of the people have some kind of knowledge about science or when they think of it there is some kind of image related to it, a theory, scientific words or scientific research (Beyond Conservation, n.d.). Many different sorts of ideas float into an individual’s mind. Every individual has a different perception about science and how he/she perceives it. It illustrates that each person can identify science in some form. It indicates that the ‘science’ plays a vital role in our everyday lives (Lederman & Tobin, 2002). It seems that everyone can identify science but cannot differentiate it correctly from pseudo-science and non-science (Park, 1986). This essay will address the difference between science, non-science and pseudo-science. Then it will discuss possible responses to the question that what should we do when there is a clash between scientific explanation and non-scientific explanation. Then it will present a brief examination about the correct non-scientific explanation.
In the TED talk, “The Pursuit of Ignorance,” Stuart Firestein makes the argument that there is this great misconception in the way that we study science. He describes the way we view the process of science today as, "a very well-ordered mechanism for understanding the world, for gaining facts, for gaining data." (Firestein 0:11 and 18:23) Although Firestein provides a convincing argument that modern science processes rely too much on facts instead of ignorance and new discovery, he fails to provide strong evidence that it should instead focus solely on the pursuit of ignorance.
In his argument, Michael Ruse defended the science communities’ position that creation-science was not a science. He claims that it is a pseudo-science. His main argument against creationism was based on the lack of support from the established view of real science. Ruse laid out what he believed the criteria for real science should look like. He then, expanded on several parts of scientific activity which included the role of prediction, explanation, testability, confirmation, falsifiability, tentativeness, and integrity. Ruse presents these as the absolute necessary empirical and social fundamentals for determining whether observable theories are scientific.
In this essay I will argue that science and pseudoscience cannot be clearly demarcated: rather that there’s great difficulty and complication on the fringes when asserting strict criteria that distinguishes the two. I will give a brief overview and draw on the arguments made by philosophers of science throughout history and explain why perhaps their criteria are problematic. I will look in depth into ‘creation science’ and why we strongly consider this as pseudoscientific and analyse the more ambiguous peripheries of science such as Freudian psychoanalysis or even economics.
The world of science, as we know it today, is a difficult subject to grasp. So many new ideas are present and these new ideas are not interchangeable. Some parts do work together although as a whole they don’t fully coincide with each other. The three basic ideas that science is now based upon come from Newton, Einstein, and Hawking. I call these ideas/theories “new” based on what I classify the state of the scientific community of today. After looking at what is going on in science, it is clear to me that the scientific world is in a crisis state. According to Kuhn, a crisis state is when science is in the middle of choosing a particular paradigm to work under. For scientists, there is a general theme
We live in a strange and puzzling world. Despite the exponential growth of knowledge in the past century, we are faced by a baffling multitude of conflicting ideas. The mass of conflicting ideas causes the replacement of knowledge, as one that was previously believed to be true gets replace by new idea. This is accelerated by the rapid development of technology to allow new investigations into knowledge within the areas of human and natural sciences. Knowledge in the human sciences has been replaced for decades as new discoveries by the increased study of humans, and travel has caused the discarding of a vast array of theories. The development of
Assumptions in the title of this essay imply that results, theories and laws resulting from the current system of peer review multiple perspectives produce completely infallible objective truth, this is a false premise. Whilst the group of knowers known as the scientific community have collectively less bias than one lone knower trying to understand the universe, there is still collective and engrained level of institutional bias. The same problems of confirmation bias and expectation are present in a group of knowers just as they are with one single knower. According to Karl Popper (1902-1994) the best way to eliminate any expectation and confirmation bias was to falsify and disprove rather than confirm one’s hypothesis and predictions. Popper argues: no matter how convincing an argument or theory is, all that is needed to disprove it is one piece of valid counterclaiming evidence. Whilst this theory is valid on an individual level, it really becomes an effective tool in the objectivity of science on a large scale. Despite this attempt at objectifying and ‘protecting against’ error and bias it is inadequate due to inherent flaws in the scientific method. Induction, moving from the specific to the general, is the key element in scientific logic. Any theory or law ‘proved’ through this logic has some key flaws: the main flaw being that inductive logic can never be certain of any event happening or of any prediction. Richard van de Lagemaat
This book, ‘What is this Thing called Science?’ is assigned to write a review on the third edition which was published in the year 1999, 1st February by University of Queensland Press. This book is reflects up to date with day today’s contemporary trend and gives a basic introduction on the philosophy of science. This is a very comprehensive book explaining the nature of science and its historical development. It is very informative and a necessary reference when attempting to understand the how science has evolved throughout time. The book is also well organized, and each chapter is concluded with suggestions for further reading. This book is actually a review on the philosophy of science.
Why do young bright minds of India want to take up science or research as a promising career path in the first place? Doesn’t it feel like a risk? What career opportunities does one have after getting a PhD? These questions are bugging me quite a lot these days. For most of us, born and brought up in middle class urban society are taught right from the start to work hard and be well educated enough to secure a good job. Seemingly it is the gateway to lead a comfortable life. I think in India it is the most important thing in life. Getting a decent job. It’s the only thing that matters. No matter how creative you are and harbor any kind of alternate ambitions otherwise it becomes secondary after a point. So growing up, the thought of pursuing science and research could only be such a far-fetched dream for many of us I guess.
Before Einstein, Scientists believed that light waves travelled through a medium called ether. Einstein proved that ether was irrelevant and that light doesn’t travel through a medium. Einstein proved this by figuring out that the speed of light was constant, and in order for ether to be the medium light waves travel through, the speed of light would change depending on the observer. This discovery was one piece of the Specific Theory of Relativity.