The Hierarchy Of The Sciences

In the beginning God created the heavens with the Earth along with man in his own image. For over 1500 years, Christian followers were heavy believers of the bible, seeing it as the primary source for knowledge. Then came the scientific revolution in the 1500s, a movement which challenged the Christian view of the universe. It was a time when people were looking for a new way of thinking about the world. Since then and to this day, there has been several instances in which scientific inquiry and religious belief have collided in their ideologies.

Trefil, J., & Hazen, R. M. (2011). The sciences: An integrated approach. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,

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.

Contemporary scientific progression and discourses allude to the emergence of an increasingly technological future. Implicit within this notion is the premise that emerging technologies can be used to open new frontiers that benefit and promote human advancement. Intuitively, this stipulation can be extrapolated to medicine where present technologies play a critical mantle in upholding the therapeutic and traditional aims of medical doctrine. But beyond conventional medical applications of technologies, many have begun to recognize their underlying potential for not only treatment, but enhancement of our present biological state.

The first part of Sandra Harding’s Science and Social Inequality is comprised of 6 chapters that situate science firmly within the social and political world and ultimately serve to question the outcomes of its research

Bourdieu understands fields generally to be “networks of relations among the objective position within it” occupied by either agents or institutions and constrained by the structure of the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 97). The field is also one of struggle where the structure of the field “undergirds and guides the strategies whereby the occupants of these positions seek, individually or collectively, to safeguard or improve their position, and to impose the principle of hierarchization most favorable to their own products” (Bourdieu as cited in Wacquant 1989, 40). What is of interest in my case is the academic field, comprised of several different groups of agents and institutions, including

Historians of the Scientific Revolution have become intrigued with the development of scientific knowledge, scientific practices and scientific communities. In Paulo Rossi’s book The Birth of Modern Science, we see many examples of how scientific methods and formulas are composed, crafted, and confirmed. We see the differences in commitment between the elite and the popular; partially due to the circumstances of the time. We also notice how previously accepted and understood scientific formulas have been proven wrong, and the steps that were taken to get there. This paper explains how the elite and the popular were classified and separated by the rich and poor. The elite and popular were also separated through the educated and uneducated, with

Others have argued that the scale of science has been growing steadily for centuries, and that it is impossible to pinpoint a definite start for Big Science. Derek J. de Solla Price explained that the scale of science had been increasing over the 300 years up to the start of the Second World War, and suggested that Big Science signified the near end of this scientific era. (Capshew & Rader, 1992, p. 7) He also postulated that an entirely different style of conducting science would soon emerge.

Marshall Sahlins’ has a quote that we stand on the shoulders of giants to shit on their heads reflects the idea of paradigm shift. The shoulders personify the collective knowledge of those researchers before us, as students it is where we gain our information. It is not through our own work that we initially study our respective fields; we study the accumulation of work that those giants have codified. The shit represents new ideas, criticism, and reworking of the previously held beliefs. The constant questioning of beliefs, seeking new answers is an intrinsic feature of scientific inquiry. This holds true not only in the hard sciences but in the social sciences as well, some may say to an even greater extent, due to the nature of the

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

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.

Longino suggests that subjective judgment is a component of all knowledge production, and that acknowledging this will make for greater objectivity in science. She questions the basis for a distinction between the context of discovery and justification. If the context of justification is a myth, then it doesn 't make sense to speak about the 'accuracy ' of data. If it doesn 't make sense to speak about the accuracy of data, then it doesn 't make sense to propose a normative philosophy of science based on accuracy. What is need is a 'better bias. ' This better bias will be obtained by including as many diverse points of view as possible. Better bias implies broader inclusion of minorities and women.

I chose this question since it has actually stayed with me for the whole TOK course. I found it very difficult to find a link, for example, of perception in math or how reason could fit into art. A network suggests that more than one way of knowing can collaborate within another in order to gain knowledge in a particular Area of knowing. The statement implies that not using a network of WOK to gain knowledge is unwise. Thus, I wish to examine how we best acquire knowledge in Natural Sciences and History. My two central knowledge questions are, how reliable is it to use only one way of knowing in one Area of knowledge in order to gain knowledge? and Is it essential to use a network of ways of knowing to acquire good knowledge?

Disagreement may aid the pursuit of knowledge in the natural and human sciences because disagreement leads to new discoveries. Disagreement is about gathering reliable knowledge as well as using this newfound knowledge, and occurs when a group fails to reach a consensus over the logic of an argument. Knowledge is composed of facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education. Two areas of knowledge that are impacted by disagreement are human science and natural science. Human science is the study of human behavior and how humans gather information. Natural science is a branch of science that deals with the physical world. In order for a disagreement to occur, one must be familiar with the subject and have his or her own prediction that is different from the norm. Therefore, to advance knowledge in the areas of human and natural science, people must disagree. The roles of logic, reason, and emotion will be investigated to see how they are used to help gain new knowledge in both human and natural science.

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.