The Impact Of Science And Philosophy Of Science Essay

Amina Hertzog Period 4 E-Glossary Semester 1 Chapter 1: Science – a way of using valid data to create knowledge and understand the nature of things such as natural life Observation – the practice of getting information and data from an experiment by looking, feeling, smelling, tasting and/or hearing Data – the information that a scientist gets from his or her experiments Inference – an idea or conclusion that was created from previous experience and information Hypothesis – a conclusion or explanation from observations made in n experiment Spontaneous Generation – the idea of living things coming from not living things Controlled Experiment – an experiment that has one variable doing the changing and the main focus of the experiment

1.Chalmers, A. F., 1999. What is this thing called science?. 3rd ed. Indianapolis/Cambridge: University of

The scientific revolution started in the 16th and 17th century with development of the scientific theories (Hatch, n.d.). These Scientific theories are detailed explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on knowledge that has been repeatedly duplicated through observation and experimental procedures. The understanding or the attempt to understand the human’s perspective of the world through scientific theories is the birth to the philosophy of science (Okasha, 2002). Several perspectives of scientific theories have been postulated by many on the history and philosophy of science. One of such is the Kuhn theory of science development postulated by Thomas Kuhn. His theory brought about a new perspective where

The inductivist account of science recognizes five steps which are essential to scientific progress. First, scientists compile a large body of facts from observation and experiment. Using the principle of induction, these facts can be generalized to form the basis for a theory or law. Then, once a theory has been developed, scientists can use the theory as part of a valid logical argument to make new predictions or explanations of phenomena. According to Chalmers, the inductivist account has “a certain appeal” to it, namely, that all of scientific progress can be seen as the result of five fundamental leaps of thought (54). “Its attraction lies in the fact that it does seem to capture in a formal way

I had a problem, I had a big problem. I had to fix something very important before everything went wrong. 7 days ago I was sleeping when at the middle of the night suddenly a phone call interrupted my sleep. I answered it. A person with a monotone voice spoke to him, “Doctor Gregory, this is you correct?”.

As a child Bill Bryson found science textbooks to be boring, he wanted to make it possible for adults to learn new scientific theories, developments and discoveries in one easy way. A Short History of Nearly Everything does just that, offering a concise, readable, entertaining summary of current scientific thinking, for adults. Within each section of the book specific topics are brought to mind, such as outer space, the Earth, and living things. Each chapter investigates a particular question much like “How did the Universe start?” or “What are supernovae and why are they important?” Throughout the book, Bryson explains the interesting and inspirational lives of historical scientists and recent researchers.

In basic terms, no single person can be credited for having developed the scientific method singlehandedly. In that regard, it can be noted that the scientific method has been refined and fine tuned over time by some of the greatest thinkers in history. In this text, I come up with a brief description of the method as well as its history. Further, I highlight the contributions made by a number of philosophers in the development of the scientific method.

Throughout time, science has had significant impacts on society. It has not only contributed to new ways of thought and understanding, but it has also advanced the human race. However, science has proved that it is a power that can lead to devastating consequences and because of this, western society’s attitude towards science changed from the 18th century to the end of the 20th century.

Within the last century scientific discovery has been growing at an exponential rate. Evolution, genetics, physics, and chemistry have all greatly affected the way people view the universe and human role in it. Furthermore, the application of scientific discoveries has physically changed society. For example, humans went from being flightless to eighty years later having transportation in super sonic jets available. Rapid scientific change has caused many issues surrounding morality and science to arise. The idea behind the skepticism is that just because something can be done doesnt mean it should be. Nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and cloning have all fallen under fire due to this concept. People worry that

Language represents human’s experiences and different fields hold different ways of language using. The language of science actively constructs scientific reality, i.e. a way of looking at the world, the roles assigned to readers and the way of organizing information (LING337-nominalisation). However, science may be presented diversely according to the different intended audience, purposes and modes. Three texts chosen in this paper are all concerned with the same scientific reality, but their language differs widely. The ways in which science are presented in this three texts largely depends on their audience, purposes and modes. To put it another way, language of science in the chosen texts

Problem: You arrive home late at night. You walk up to the front door, unlock it, and reach in to turn on the light switch located just inside the front door. The light does not come on! Now what?

Science is an objective method used explain the natural phenomena of the universe. The practice of a scientific method provides a detailed outline that contributes to expressing how to determine if a theory is scientific. A continual cycle that emphasizes the techniques of observations, questions, hypothesis, prediction, experiment, and conclusion. The complications that arise when applying the scientific method to all theories is that science is subject to change; therefore, it is hard to modify extensive ideas to a few simplified steps. A scientific explanation depends on existing experimental theories to validate or disprove present and future logical arguments. This is because previous observations support abstract methods that may not be testable and the continual change is dependent on specific predictions and discoveries.

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.

In the course of this semester, we have read a number of stories that have one common element: science. In most of the stories, the science was hypothetical, but accurate, for the time and usually played an important part in the story. Today we know that most of these ideas range from simply being wrong to flat out impossible. When I say science I am referring to the sciences that are of a physical nature such as biology, chemistry, and physics. Psychology is also a science, but one of a mental nature. The few books that we had that dealt mainly with psychology will not be dealt with in this paper.

Science has, for centuries now, been a way to answer unknowns and change questions into answers. From the cause of seasons, to the human genome, science has made a huge impact on the world, in the way we function and think. Science has allowed the expansion of life across the globe, and allowed the fears, such as those of falling off of the edge of the earth, to be eliminated. Science exists only to answer questions that are hypothesized by the human brain, but sometimes science can be flawed. To be more accurate one must state that the problem is not with science being flawed, the long standing issue is the flawed scientist, and the nature of the human brain. The flaw in the human brain is feelings, and for the purpose of this paper, bias. Bias is almost impossible to control in one way or another, bias can be as small as liking green over red. For the purpose of this papers argument the bias is racial. Scientific racism is the use of science, most commonly ostensible science, to substantiate and justify racist philosophies and positions. Often these pseudo scientists would ignore and fabricate results and conclusions, to correlate positively with their hypothesis. These skewed results were then shared through scientific journals, with other intellectuals and then the public. Multiple forms of scientific racism were used in the 19th century to justify the social, physical, and mental disparities and abuse of minorities in America.