Stuart Firestein's Ignorance: How It Drives Science

Joel Achenbach, the author of the article, “Why Do Reasonable People Doubt Science?” starts of by saying that in today's era the people often disagree with scientific reasoning. The world we live in today is so full of problems it's hard to tell what is real anymore. The decision is left to the individual to decide what to believe is true or false, and then how there going to put their beliefs into action. Achenbach later explains in his article that the scientific method pushes back all the opinions and unfolds the real truth.

He portrays scientific research as dangerous by declaring that a “single step can also take one of a cliff.” This further emphasizes the courage prerequisite to scientists and hearkens back to the fear of the unknown. The fact that all of one’s work may be dashed into pieces by a single finding in the laboratory conveys the tenacity of researchers. Barry’s description of the process by which a scientist decides which “tools” are appropriate to the task at hand, exemplifies the tedious and often inglorious labor involved in most scientific research. Barry finally predicts that if a scientist is successful a “flood” of colleagues and others will “pave roads” over the paths so painstakingly laid, taking one within minutes to the very place the scientist spent so long searching for. This suggests that in the wake of major discovery, the actual pioneer of this breakthrough may be forgotten. Countless researchers have made valuable contributions to the human understanding of the world, and faded into obscurity over the course of the history of science. Barry’s conceit conveys the fact that, like exploring uncharted wilderness, scientific research can be both treacherous and thankless, but all the more noble for

Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution provides a comprehensive breakdown of the discoveries that defined the Scientific Revolution and the history behind them. The story of the scientific revolution truly begins with a separation between the Catholic Church and the denizens of Europe brought on by the Protestant Reformation. This separation led directly to the questioning of the church and what they deemed to be true. The growing suspicion of the church applied not only to the politics and religious views but the scientific “facts” the church was built upon. The suspicion of these scientific facts quickly grew to an open challenging of these facts, The Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is something we have all studied in our grade school years and the discoveries of people such as Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei are well documented and arguably common knowledge but Jardine’s book Ingenious Pursuits encapsulates the scientific revolution in a new light. Jardine accomplishes this by telling the stories of some of the greatest achievements of the Scientific Revolution. These stories reveal the collaborations of some of histories most brilliant minds as well as the secrecy amongst them and uncover the motives that fueled many of these accomplishments.

Fahnestock investigates how original science writing is primarily devoted to presenting facts and assumes the audience has relevant background knowledge and understands the significance. Conversely, accommodated writings shift the genre to become epideictic and thus neglect addressing facts, instead focus on emphasizing the importance of a discovery. One reason Fahnestock provides for the shift in genre is in order for an audience to realize the significance of a discovery accommodators must ensure the audience is able to accept a fact and align it according with existing beliefs. To ensure they are successful, Fahnestock argues that accommodators rely on

Barry opens his nonfiction text by emphasizing that certainty is a confident resilience while uncertainty produces frailty, but in a way that sends out opposite outcomes. He enhances this purpose by constantly using repetition with the word uncertainty to amplify how scientific research is an uncertain apparatus. By way of illustration,

Within the article titled “The Mistrust of Science” by Atul Gawande, the article is a written document of an address at the California Institute of Technology and describes the connection of science to every single human on Earth. This is done because the presenter defines science as “a systematic way of thinking” since science allows humans to contemplate beyond the information being given to them at any time, such as the questions may follow of how, when, where, why, and how? The presenter states the opinion that, no matter what major you are declared as or the type of occupation you hold, science is embedded into the way you are living, despite you not having any knowledge of certain science topics.

The scientific method continues to be misrepresented in public schools all over the world. Students are being taught that there is a beginning and an end to the scientific method, and that everything in between is protocol and must be followed chronologically. “Ask a question, do some research, come up with a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, understand your data, make your conclusion!” a grade six science teacher will tell their students. “It’ll be on your quiz!”. However, what those students are not being taught is that the scientific method has never been, and will never be a linear process. Scientists constantly revisit different steps of the process in order to better understand the subject matter; sometimes it can take many years to

Brilliant author, John M. Barry, once proclaimed, “Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles… It is the courage to accept—indeed, embrace—uncertainty” (Barry 3-5 & 9-10). These quotes can be traced back to John M. Barry’s passage of “The Great Influenza,” where he writes an account about the 1918 flu epidemic that struck the world. In his account, he goes into further explanation about the rigors and fulfillment of being a scientist, and simultaneously, discusses the tedious process of their research. Ultimately, society is educated that the life of a scientist should not be absolute, but it should consist of persistence and courage. In John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza,” the author employs innovative metaphors and unique rhetorical questions to portray scientific research.

Discoveries are everywhere in everyday life and they can impact the way we see the world, either positively or negatively. Because of this, it can be noted that “Not all discoveries are welcomed”. We can explore this philosophy through the examination of various techniques found within both Robert Gray’s ‘Journey, North Coast’ and ‘The Meatworks’, as well Leo Matsuda’s animated short film, ‘Inner workings’. These three texts, although all having visual processes of discovery, offer juxtaposing perspectives on the acceptance (or lack of) towards discoveries.

Much credit should belong to scientists for making important technological and medical discoveries in the world. In Bishop,'sEnemies of Promise," well known scientists point out views regarding their belief in science. Representative George E. Brown, Jr., who has been trained as a physicist admits that "his faith in science has been shaken." He feels that as our knowledge of science increases, so do the occurrence of social problems. Brown, Jr. Feels that the progression of science should lead to diminishing social problems rather than an increase.(238) The real question is, is science to blame, or are the humans creating science to blame? Critics such as Brown and Lamm "blame science for what are actually the failures of individuals to use the knowledge that science has provided." Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus, is a good example of a myth about a scientist who took science to an extreme.

John M. Barry's ///The Great Influenza///, about the 1918 flu epidemic, explains how as well as why scientists commit to their calling. By the end of the excerpt, Barry, through his words, bases the nature of scientific research on uncertainty, which requires diligence, risk, and exploration out of exceptional scientists. Using rhetorical strategies, Barry characterizes scientific research as mysterious and dangerous, a research done by scientists who are pioneers, in a figurative sense.

“There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as [we] are free to ask what [we] must, free to say what [we] think, free to think what [we] will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress.”

The general consensus in the academic world is that knowledge is power that can solve humanity’s problems. Sometimes, it is clouded by greed, or it lights the way for a better humanity. Scientists experiment to prove new theories, artists sculpt to express emotion and theologians study to provide interpretations of biblical stories. Therein lies the problem, while society is always searching for knowledge, to date there is no singular “foolproof” method of obtaining it. In the movie “The Theory of Everything,” Stephen Hawking has a “eureka” moment when pulling a sweater over his head and seeing flames through the material. In this case, it seemed that serendipity played a role in his search for truth. This led me to wonder, to what extent is the discovery of knowledge a matter of serendipity that can then go on to solve problems? While an exploration of whether knowledge is produced only to solve problems in the Natural Sciences may be more obvious, its application to Mathematics and Indigenous Knowledge may draw some interesting observations.

In this essay I attempt to answer the following two questions: What is Karl Popper’s view of science? Do I feel that Thomas Kuhn makes important points against it? The two articles that I make reference to are "Science: Conjectures and Refutations" by Karl Popper and "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?" by Thomas Kuhn.

Other phrases throughout the first four pages use words like "nightmare", "destroy", "haunt", and "anguish" to attract readers to how seriously society takes awareness of science. These phrases get readers to feel the urgency of the views against science in society. The dark phrasing successfully shows that society has taken a responsible view against incorrect scientific application.