Natural Sciences- Scope
• What is the area of knowledge about?
• What practical problems can be solved through applying this knowledge?
• What makes this area of knowledge important?
• What are the current open questions in this area?
• Are there ethical considerations that limit the scope of inquiry?
What is science?
Science: organised, systematic enterprise that
gathers knowledge about the world and
condenses the knowledge into testable laws.
- Edward O Wilson
Non-science
The Scientific Method
Traditional Model: Inductivism
1 Observation
2 Hypothesis
3 Experiment
4 Law
5 Theory
Scientific experiments
A good experiment should have the following features:• controllability
• measurability
• repeatability
An example: The Copernican Revolution
An example: The Copernican Revolution
An example: The Copernican Revolution
1 Observation
2 Hypothesis
3 Experiment
4 Law
5 Theory
Problems with observation
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Relevance
Expectations
Expert seeing
The observer effect
Which comes first- observation or theory?
Testing hypotheses
• Confirmation bias
• Background assumptions
• Many different hypotheses are consistent with
a given set of data
nb The principle of simplicity
Testing hypotheses
The problem of induction
Hypothetico-deductive method
Karl Popper: Falsification
But I shall certainly admit a system as Empirical
or Scientific only if it is capable of being tested
by Experience. These considerations suggest
that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of
a system is to be taken as the criterion of
demarcation.
- Karl Popper
Falsification: Problems
• Experimental errors
• Auxiliary hypotheses
Thomas Kuhn: Paradigm Shifts
• Normal science
• Scientific revolutions
• Periods of scientific crisis
Thomas Kuhn: Paradigm Shifts
Paradigm Shifts: Problems
• Normal science
• Scientific revolutions
• Periods of scientific crisis
Science and Truth
In Kuhn’s view, scientists don’t discover the nature of
reality; they create it. There is no way the world is,
for each paradigm makes its own world. It’s easy to
see why such views raise questions about the end of
science. If there is not truth with a capital ‘T’, then,
of course, it makes no sense to say that scientists have
a monopoly of it.
from The End of Science by Theodore Schick Jr
WOKs
 Memory
 Sense Perception
 Language
 Reason
 Emotion
 Intuition
 Imagination
 Faith
Knowledge Questions
Linking Questions