Chemistry and Society: Ethical and Professional Aspects Quiz

Chemistry & Society: Ethical and Professional Aspects (CSEPA 2023-2024)

Introduction

• The course aims to explore the complex relationship between science and society, societal expectations from natural sciences and engineering, and uncertainties in debates concerning the role of natural sciences in society.
• The course contributes to the development of general academic skills required for graduate scientists in professional practice.

Course Structure

• The course involves a combination of lectures, tutorials, and assignments.
• Lectures are centered around a core topic, explaining theory and providing examples that link to students' backgrounds, experiences, and perceptions.
• Assignments involve working in groups on a paper that reflects on the relationship between science and society within a given set of themes.

Chapter 1: Philosophy of Science

Truth

• The three main goals of science are to describe, predict, and explain the true nature of the universe.
• The question of what is truth is still debated today, with two main questions:
  • What does it mean for a claim to be true? (What is truth?)
  • How do we determine that a claim is true? (Mechanisms to find truth)

Epistemology: Methods to Ascertain Truth

• Rationalism and empiricism are two approaches to understanding truth.
• Rationalism believes that knowledge comes from reason, whereas empiricism believes that knowledge comes from experience.

Critique on the Standard View of Science

• Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn are two prominent critics of the standard view of science.
• Popper's critique argues that scientific theories are not definitive and can be falsified, whereas Kuhn's critique argues that scientific theories are influenced by social and cultural factors.

Science & Technology Studies: The Finding of Facts

• Science and technology studies examine the social and cultural context of scientific knowledge production.
• This approach highlights the importance of understanding how facts are constructed and presented in scientific research.

The Ethos of Science

• The ethos of science refers to the values and norms that guide scientific research.
• This includes values such as objectivity, honesty, and accountability.

Metascience

• Metascience refers to the study of the science of science itself.
• This involves examining the methods, practices, and values of scientific research.

Contextualized Science

• Contextualized science recognizes the importance of considering the social, cultural, and historical context of scientific research.
• This approach acknowledges that scientific knowledge is not neutral and is influenced by various factors.

References

• Payne, W.R. (2015). An Introduction to Philosophy.### Epistemology and the Study of Knowledge
• Epistemology is the study of the nature and origin of knowledge.
• The field of epistemology focuses on how we can ascertain that something is true.

The Scientific Method

• The traditional "scientific method" is often misleading.
• In actual practice, scientists employ a variety of methods that involve a broad range of patterns of reasoning, both inductive and deductive.
• The support for a hypothesis is often a matter of inference-to-the-best-explanation rather than inductive generalization.

Rationalism and Empiricism

• Rationalism: knowledge is based on ideas and can be known through pure reason, as in mathematical modeling and application.
• Empiricism: all knowledge is ultimately acquired through sense experience.
• Key figures in empiricism include John Locke and David Hume.

John Locke's Empiricism

• Locke argued against innate ideas, instead believing that the mind starts off as a tabula rasa (blank slate).
• All ideas come from experience, and complex ideas are formed from simple ideas through the capacities of the understanding.

David Hume's Empiricism

• Hume postulated two forms of reasoning:
  • A priori reasoning: independent of experience, as in mathematical and logical reasoning.
  • A posteriori reasoning: based on experience from sensory input, as in inductive reasoning.
• Hume argued that inductive reasoning is based on habit or custom, with no logical justification.

The Problem of Induction

• The problem of induction refers to the issue of justifying inductive reasoning.
• Hume questioned the assumption that the future will resemble the past.
• The problem of induction remains unresolved, with no satisfactory solution.

Logical Positivism

• Logical positivism is the belief that all problems, including social problems, can be solved by science.
• The Vienna Circle, a group of philosophers and scientists, worked on the question of what distinguishes science from other forms of knowledge acquisition.
• Key characteristics of science include logical reasoning and the substantiation of knowledge by means of empirical evidence.

The Empirical Cycle

• The empirical cycle consists of observation, formulation of empirical laws, theory formulation, and prediction.
• Theories should be verifiable by means of observation, and concepts that are not directly visible must correspond to verifiable statements.

Critique of the Standard View of Science

• Karl Popper critiqued the standard view, arguing that scientists mainly use deduction rather than induction.
• Popper emphasized the importance of refutation and confirmation, and the criterion of falsification in distinguishing scientific from non-scientific theories.
• Popper also argued that observation is not a passive recording process, but rather requires a theory from the start.### Contributions of Popper and Kuhn
• Popper's contributions give theory-forming a more important place in the empirical cycle.
• Thomas Kuhn's critique of objectivity focused on how science evolves based on historical material about scientific developments.
• Kuhn's descriptive analysis of 'truth-seeking' in science stresses the importance of context-of-discovery.
• He introduced the term "paradigm" to describe the set of problems, examples, methods, techniques, rules, and assumptions shared and used within a scientific community.
• Kuhn argued that scientific progress is made when a puzzle is solved within a paradigm.

Paradigm Shifts

• A crisis emerges when new and unexpected phenomena are repeatedly uncovered by scientific research.
• A crisis can lead to a transition to a new paradigm, which requires the reconstruction of prior assumptions and the re-evaluation of prior facts.
• Kuhn regarded paradigm shifts as non-rational, and there is no single generally accepted paradigm that can direct the shift.

Science and Technology Studies

• Science and Technology Studies (STS) explores how scientific research is carried out within a societal context.
• STS shows that observations and experiments require 'non-scientific' knowledge on the part of the scientists involved.
• Theories are often empirically underdetermined, meaning they are formulated more broadly than the empirical evidence allows.

Constructivism

• Constructivism argues that scientific facts are less hard than usually suggested.
• The active, constructive role of scientists means that scientific facts have a societal element.
• Bruno Latour's research on the construction of scientific facts compares accepted facts to a 'black box'.
• Latour argues that the construction of scientific facts requires hindsight, and reality is the result of the process.

Ethos of Science

• The ethos of science refers to the norms and values that ensure scientists adhere to empirical and rational principles.
• Robert Merton's four norms are: communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized scepticism.
• These norms are known collectively as the ethos of science and aim to ensure objective, unbiased, and value-free science.

Critique of the Standard View

• Many scientists and sociologists of science have critiqued the standard view, arguing that it is not entirely determined by social processes.
• Ian Mitroff's work showed that Mertonian norms do not necessarily represent the norms of science and provided empirical evidence of the influence of "counter norms" in science.
• Kees Schuyt argues that the scientific attitude needs to be redefined to reflect the insights gained from a justified criticism of an overly inward-focused and complacent scientific practice.