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Natural Sciences- Scope

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?

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Natural Sciences- Scope

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  1. 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?

  2. What is science? • Science: organised, systematic enterprise that gathers knowledge about the world and condenses the knowledge into testable laws. • - Edward O Wilson

  3. Non-science

  4. The Scientific Method • Traditional Model: Inductivism • 1 Observation • 2 Hypothesis • 3 Experiment • 4 Law • 5 Theory

  5. Scientific experiments • A good experiment should have the following features:- • controllability • measurability • repeatability

  6. An example: The Copernican Revolution

  7. An example: The Copernican Revolution

  8. An example: The Copernican Revolution • 1 Observation • 2 Hypothesis • 3 Experiment • 4 Law • 5 Theory

  9. Problems with observation • Relevance • Expectations • Expert seeing • The observer effect

  10. Which comes first- observation or theory?

  11. Testing hypotheses • Confirmation bias • Background assumptions • Many different hypotheses are consistent with a given set of data • nb The principle of simplicity

  12. Testing hypotheses

  13. The problem of induction

  14. Hypothetico-deductive method

  15. Karl Popper: Falsification

  16. 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

  17. Falsification: Problems • Experimental errors • Auxiliary hypotheses

  18. Thomas Kuhn: Paradigm Shifts • Normal science • Scientific revolutions • Periods of scientific crisis

  19. Thomas Kuhn: Paradigm Shifts

  20. Paradigm Shifts: Problems • Normal science • Scientific revolutions • Periods of scientific crisis

  21. 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

  22. WOKs • Memory • Sense Perception • Language • Reason • Emotion • Intuition • Imagination • Faith

  23. Knowledge Questions

  24. Linking Questions

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