The Philosophy of Science

by Oubliette 60 Replies latest members private

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  cofty

  I'm not sure what you meant when you wrote, "We all do science every day without realising it." In my experience most people do NOT do science every day. If they did there'd be a whole lot less JWs. Could you clarify?

  I just mean in dozens of small events very day.

  You hear a rattle from under the bonnet (hood) and you investigate using science. You switch things off and on, you rev up the engine gradually, you push and pull things until the noise changes or stops. Then you do it again to see if it is repeatable until you are certain you have found the cause. You don't jump to the conclusion that you have a demon in the car or pray for it to be quieter.

  When it comes to bigger puzzles that are not so readily solved there is a tendency to abandon science and resort to fantasical answers.
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  Oubliette

  This came up on another thread and it seemed relevant to post it here.

  Tthe typical JW has not been taught how to distinguish a real academic work from one that is not. In fact, we were actively discouraged from pursing any educational courses that would have naturally led to the development of these skills. Critical thinking is all but banned in JW-land!

  And so, it's not surprising that we find a number of people uncritically posting inaccurate information hastily copied from the internet.

  "Evaluating the credibility and validity of a resource can be very difficult, particularly when doing research using the Internet." - PBS Now Classroom

  In the interest of helping my fellow ex- and soon-to-be-exJWs out, here are a few select links typical of those I use with my students to help them learn how to determine the reliability of a source:

  • Purdue University OWL: Evaluating Sources
  • Cornell University: Introduction to Research
  • Harvard University Guide to Using Sources: What's Wrong with Wikipedia?
  • US Center for Disease Control: Deciding Whether a Source is Reliable
  • PBS Research Guide: Assessing Sources (NOW Classroom) - has a pdf worksheet

  Enjoy!

  --
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  done4good

  Good post. I have found that not only JWs, but most fundamentalist types take the "us vs. them" mentality to science. They do not understand that science is a methodology, not a belief system. As long as that false undestanding of what the premise of what science serves exists, the us vs. them mentality will not be overcome. In short more people need to understand what the scientific method is. I think a good many JWs may actually wake up this way.
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  Oubliette

  done4good: I think a good many JWs may actually wake up this way.

  That is one of my goals of posting this thread!
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  Oubliette

  Cofty: You hear a rattle from under the bonnet (hood) and you investigate using science. You switch things off and on, you rev up the engine ... You don't jump to the conclusion that you have a demon in the car or pray for it to be quieter.

  Thanks for clarifying. Now I have a better idea of what you meant when you said, "We all do science every day ..."

  I think this demonstrates that most of us have the capacity to be logical and rational when the stakes are not too high and the pressure not too intense. On the other hand:

  Cofty: When it comes to bigger puzzles that are not so readily solved there is a tendency to abandon science and resort to fantasical answers.

  This comment supports what I've experienced with most people whenever something comes up that pushes their knowledge, cognitive skills and/or experience to its limit. Then, instead of doing the intelligent thing and maintaining a scientific approach to things, most people quickly turn to pseudo-scientific "explanations," superstition, astrology or other assorted woo.

  Really, people need to be trained to maintain this sort of mental discipline.
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  Oubliette

  KateWild: Scientists know they have much to learn and don't know everything. This fuels their enquiry and keeps them asking questions and philosophising about the answers.

  Great comment!

  This is exactly the point I am trying to emphasize with this thread.

  KateWild: That being said, as a student of Chemistry I learned ... there was a right and wrong. The subject is black and white, in assigments there was no room for philosophy or opinion....

  It sounds like your teacher did you a grave disservice by not differentiating the approach of science with its practice in a classroom. Indeed, the classroom is the ideal place to teach the philosophy of science. In my experience, experiments rarely turn out exactly as expected.

  Just last week, in a classroom demonstration, I tried to replicate the classic heat of fusion experiment of slowly heating a beaker full of ice. The beaker was placed on a hot-plate at a medium-high setting. I also had an electronic probe suspended from above inserted 5 cm into the crushed ice. Th probe was plugged into a laptop with software that graphed the temperature rise in real time. In theory, the temperature of the ice water mixture should stay at 0°C until all the ice is melted. In reality, the temperature flucuated all over the place during the 20 minutes it took for all the ice to melt.

  The discrepant results did not disprove the theories concerning heat transfer and the properties of water during the phase change from ice to water.

  It's just that the real world is a messy place. There are a number of things that explain what happened. Clearly the temperature of the glass at the bottom of the beaker would be close to 100°C as the hot-plate gets hot enough to boil water. That heat energy is then transferred to the ice/water contents of the beaker. Once melting of some of the ice begins, interesting things happen: convection currents cause the water of various temperature to swirl and twist and turn as the contents seek to maintain some sort of thermal equilibrium. Also, I couldn't be exactly sure what part of the probe was actually measuring the temperature. Perhaps if I place more or less of it into the ice I would have gotten results which more closely resembled the expected theoretical outcome. Also, if I would have measured the experiment without supplying as much heat energy, the results would have been more as expected, but it would have taken hours, not minutes.

  All that being said, when I took an average value of the temperatures over the time it took the ice to melt, the value was fairly close to 0°C. So even in the face of disconfirming results, we can learn much.

  As a teacher, I love the outliers of data and the unexpected. We often learn more from them than when things go exactly according to the textbook!
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  Frazzled UBM

  Hmmm - I am not sure this thread is actually about the Philosophy of Science as opposed to Scientific Method. The Philosophy of Science is about scietific knowledge and truth - what is scientific knowledge and how does it relate to truth? HOw does cscientific method deal with uncertainty and inconsistency? Has scientific knowledge advanced in a linear way or does it lurch from one paradigm to another with scientific research trapped within the bounds of the current paradigm. Oubliette - do you know what Popperian falsification theory is? Have read or heard of Thomas Kuhn?
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  Oubliette

  Hi all!

  I've been pretty busy the last couple of weeks and haven't had the time I wanted to contribute to this thread.

  I did, however, start a related thread on one of my favorite sub-topics:

  • Rock-star Scientists

  I could have posted the info on this subject here, but we all know a new thread gets more hits than an old one, unless it's on certain controversial subjects .... but I digress.

  At any rate, feel free to check that one out or to contribute here on the main theme: the philosophy of science.

  Oubliette
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  jgnat

  I ponder the different outlooks between my daughter and I, and how this happened through our different raising (My fault! I know!). I joined the debating club in Junior High and quickly learned to argue well, I had to learn to argue both sides. To beat my opponent, I must know him. This led me in to one of my very early crises of conscience, realizing that truths I had taken for granted could be argued. I tested my beliefs a lot more after that.

  By contrast, I purposely set out to give my daughter a stable childhood, a community of believers, who all saw the world the same way. The rock, the unassailable truth was the bible, and everything radiated out from that. Science and scientists are suspect, as many are opposed to the "truth" as this community sees it. Why, oh why didn't I see that this would lead to a woman with poorly developed critical thinking skills?

  Now my daughter treats my opinions with suspicion, as they are not the same as she remembers. I have changed somehow, and it makes her nervous. When pressed, I explained that I had to remain true to myself and if that meant re-examining my beliefs, so be it. We left the argument unsettled.

  On my side, I bemoan her preference for "all-natural" solutions. Take for instance, her battle against flatulence. She's been guzzling high-quality probiotics for months before it dawned on her that her switch from high-meat to high-legume diet might have had something to do with it. My texted suggestion to try Beano was left unanswered, silent.

  So there's an intelligent woman trapped in there somewhere, but like I say, her ability to evaluate her most basic beliefs is hampered by her worldview.
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  talesin

  I'd like to see you address Frazzled UBM's question. Thanks.