CSS 105: Element of Scientific Thought PDF

# CSS 105: Element of Scientific Thought ## Course Objective At the end of the course, students should be able to: * Explain the concept of science. * Describe the history of scientific thought. * Explain the elements of scientific thought. * Describe the steps involved in scientific thought. * D...

# CSS 105: Element of Scientific Thought ## Course Objective At the end of the course, students should be able to: * Explain the concept of science. * Describe the history of scientific thought. * Explain the elements of scientific thought. * Describe the steps involved in scientific thought. * Distinguish the features of scientific thought. * Highlight the fundamental importance of science in acquiring knowledge. ## Course Outline * The concept of science * History of scientific thought: element of scientific thought * The steps involved in scientific thought * The distinguishing features of scientific thought * The fundamental importance of science in acquiring knowledge ### (A) The Concept of Science The word "Science" comes from the Latin word "scientia," meaning "knowledge," which indicates: - A systematic knowledge-base - A prescriptive practice capable of resulting in prediction. - The production of useful models of reality. - A systematic way of acquiring knowledge based on processes or methods in order to organize a body of knowledge gained through research. - A continuing effort to discover and increase knowledge through research. Scientists: - Use observations - Record measurable data related to observations - Analyze information to construct theoretical explanations of the phenomena involved. ### What is Science? Science consists of: - A body of knowledge - A set of procedures - Methodology - Approaches It is a body of knowledge ascertained through observations and/or experimentation. It is: - Critically tested. - Systematized - Formulated into general principle. Science can also be defined as the systematic methods of obtaining knowledge and organizing knowledge in the form of testable explanations. ### Division of Science Science is divided into two main divisions: * **Pure/Natural Science**: Deals with the study of the natural world. Disciplines within this include physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, among others. * **Social Science**: Deals with the study of human behavior and society at large. Disciplines within this include sociology, economics, criminology, geography, among others. Thus, science can be referred to as a branch of knowledge or study dealing with facts and truth systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws, which they achieve through research by using observation and experimentation. ### What is Scientific Thought? Scientific thought is a type of knowledge seeking involving intentional information seeking, such as: * Asking questions (survey/opinion poll). * Testing hypotheses * Making observations * Recognizing patterns. * Making inferences. ### Basic Components of Scientific Thought: * **Empirical Evidence**: This is a philosophical standpoint that believes all human knowledge comes predominantly from experiences gathered through the senses. It deals with the Use of **Empirical Evidence**. This includes: * Practical experience * Experiments * Empirical evidence can be checked (e.g., seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled). * **Rationalism**: This is an epistemological view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge. It highlights: * **The practice of Logical Reasoning**: Reason is a source of knowledge or justification. * **Mathematical Knowledge**: This is a good example of rationalism because through rational thought alone we can plumb the depths of numerical relations, construct proofs, and deduce ever more complex mathematical concepts. * **Skepticism**: This is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It is the belief that: * The true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain. * Questions about how we know and judge reality are important. * Constant questioning of beliefs and conclusions is crucial. ### Elements of a Scientific Explanation: * Hypotheses * Experiments * Data (observations, measurements) ### Principle of Scientific Thought: * **Inductive Reasoning**: This involves starting from specific premises and then forming a general conclusion. * **Example**: Christian goes to church every day. Ada goes to Church every day. Therefore, Ada is a Christian. * **Deductive Reasoning**: This involves using general premises to form a specific conclusion. * **Example**: Ada is a Christian. She goes to church every day. All Christians go to church every day. ### (B) History of Scientific Thought: Element of Scientific Thought The early period of human inquiry, knowledge was usually recognized in terms of theological precepts based on faith, belief in supernatural. Greek philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates argue that the fundamental nature of being and the world can be understood more accurately through a process of systematic logical reasoning called rationalism. * In particular, **Aristotle's classic work Metaphysics (literally meaning "beyond physical [existence]") separated:** * **Theology**: The study of Gods. * **Ontology**: The study of being and existence. * **Universal Science**: The study of first principles, upon which logic is based. Rationalism (not to be confused with "rationality") views reason as the source of knowledge or justification, and suggests that the criterion of truth is not sensory, but rather intellectual and deductive, often derived from a set of first principles or axioms (such as Aristotle's "law of non-contradiction"). * Prior to this time, science was viewed as a part of philosophy, and coexisted with other branches of philosophy such as logic, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. However, the boundaries between some of these branches were blurred. * The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of one or another approach to establishing scientific. After this there was a shift in paradigm that occurred during the 16th century, when British philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) suggested that knowledge can only be derived from observations in the real world. * Based on this premise, Bacon emphasized knowledge acquisition as an empirical activity (rather than as a reasoning activity), and developed empiricism as an influential branch of philosophy. * Bacon's works led to the popularization of inductive methods of scientific inquiry, the development of the "scientific method" (originally called the "Baconian method"), consisting of systematic observation, measurement, and experimentation, which sowed the seeds of atheism or the rejection of theological precepts as "unobservable. Empiricism continued to clash with rationalism throughout the middle Ages, as philosophers sought the most effective way of gaining valid knowledge. French philosopher René Descartes sided with the rationalists, while British philosophers John Locke and David Hume sided with the empiricists. * Other scientists, such as Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton, attempted to fuse the two ideas into natural philosophy (the philosophy of nature), to focus specifically on understanding nature and the physical universe. * Galileo (1564-1642) was perhaps the first to state that the laws of nature are mathematical, and contributed to the field of astronomy through an innovative combination of experimentation and mathematics. In the 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant sought to resolve the dispute between empiricism and rationalism in his book "Critique of Pure Reason", by arguing that experience is purely subjective and processing them using pure reason without first investigating into the subjective nature of experiences will lead to theoretical illusions. * Kant's ideas led to the development of German idealism, which inspired later development of interpretive techniques such as phenomenology and critical social theory. At about the same time, French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857), founder of the discipline of sociology, attempted to blend rationalism and empiricism in a new doctrine called positivism. * He suggested that theory and observations have circular dependence on each other. * While theories may be created via reasoning. They are only authentic if they can be verified through observations. * The emphasis on verification started the separation of modern science from philosophy and metaphysics and further development of the "scientific method" as the primary means of validating scientific claims. * Comte's ideas were expanded by Émile Durkheim in his development of sociological positivism (positivism as a foundation for social research) and Ludwig Wittgenstein in logical positivism. In the early 20th century, strong accounts of positivism were rejected by interpretive sociologists (anti-positivists) belonging to the German idealism school of thought. Positivism was typically equated with quantitative research methods such as experiments and surveys and without any explicit philosophical commitments, while anti-positivism employed qualitative methods such as unstructured interviews and participant observation. * Even practitioners of positivism, such as American sociologist Paul Lazarsfield who pioneered large-scale survey research and statistical techniques for analyzing survey data, acknowledged potential problems of observer bias and structural limitations in positivist inquiry. * In response, anti-positivists emphasized that social actions must be studied through interpretive means based upon an understanding the meaning and purpose that individuals attach to their personal actions, which inspired Georg Simmel's work on symbolic interactionism, Max Weber's work on ideal types, and Edmund Husserl's work on phenomenology. In the mid-to-late 20th century, both positivist and anti-positivist schools of thought were subjected to criticisms and modifications. British philosopher Sir Karl Popper suggested that human knowledge is based not on unchallengeable, rock solid foundations, but rather on a set of tentative conjectures that can never be proven conclusively, but only disproven. * **Empirical evidence is the basis for disproving these conjectures or "theories."** * This meta-theoretical stance, called post-positivism (or post-empiricism), amends positivism by suggesting that it is impossible to verify the truth although it is possible to reject false beliefs, though it retains the positivist notion of an objective truth and its emphasis on the scientific method. * Likewise, anti-positivists have also been criticized for trying only to understand society but not critiquing and changing society for the better. ### (C) The Steps Involved in Scientific Thought * **1. Ask a Question:** One must ask a meaningful question or identify significant problems. State the problem or question in a way that it is conceivably possible to answer it. Any attempt to gain knowledge must start here. * **2. Perform Research:** Gather relevant information to attempt to answer the question or solve the problem by making observations. * The first observations could be data obtained from the library, information from your own experience, or from trial experiments or past experiments. * These observations, and all that follow, must be empirical in nature--they must be sensible, measurable, and repeatable, so that others can make the same observations. * A great deal of training is necessary to understand the methods and techniques of gathering scientific data. * **3. Establish the Hypothesis:** Propose a solution or answer to the problem or question. In science, this suggested solution or answer is called a scientific hypothesis. * This is one of the most important steps a scientist can perform because the proposed hypothesis must be stated in such a way that it is testable. * A scientific hypothesis is an informed, testable, and predictive solution to scientific problems that explains a natural phenomenon, process, or event. * In critical thinking, as in science, your proposed answer or solution must be testable; otherwise it is essentially useless for further investigation. * **4. Hypothesis Testing:** Test the hypothesis before it is corroborated and given any real validity. * There are two ways to do this: * **First:** Conduct an experiment. * **Second:** Make further observations. * Every hypothesis has consequences and makes certain predictions about the phenomenon or process under investigation. Using logic and empirical evidence, one can test the hypothesis by examining how successful the predictions are, that is, how well the predictions and consequences agree with new data, further insights, new patterns, and perhaps with models. * The testability or predictiveness of a hypothesis is its most important characteristic. Only hypotheses involving natural processes, natural events, and natural laws can be tested; the supernatural cannot be tested, so it lies outside of science and its existence or nonexistence is irrelevant to science. * **5. Make Observation:** If the hypothesis fails the test, it must be rejected and either abandoned or modified. Most hypotheses are modified by scientists who don't like to simply throw out an idea they think is correct and in which they have already invested a great deal of time or effort. Nevertheless, a modified hypothesis must be tested again. * If the hypothesis passes further tests, it is considered to be a corroborated hypothesis, and can now be published. * A corroborated hypothesis is one that has passed its tests. * The predictions have been verified. Now other scientists test the hypothesis. * If further corroborated by subsequent tests, it becomes highly corroborated and is now considered to be reliable knowledge. * By the way, the technical name for this part of the scientific method is the "hypothetico-deductive method," so named because one deduces the results of the predictions of the hypothesis and tests these deductions. * Inductive reasoning, the alternative to deductive reasoning, was used earlier to help formulate the hypothesis. Both of these types of reasoning are therefore used in science, and both must be used logically. * **6. Analyze the Results and Draw a Conclusion:** The scientific method is to construct, support, or cast doubt on a scientific theory. A theory in science is not a guess, speculation, or suggestion, which is the popular definition of the word "theory." A scientific theory is a unifying and self-consistent explanation of fundamental natural processes or phenomena that is totally constructed of corroborated hypotheses. A theory, therefore, is built of reliable knowledge --built of scientific facts--and its purpose is to explain major natural processes or phenomena. Scientific theories explain nature by unifying many once-unrelated facts or corroborated hypotheses. They are the strongest and most truthful explanations of how the universe, nature, and life came to be, how they work, what they are made of, and what will become of them. Since humans are living organisms and are part of the universe, science explains all of these things about us. * **7. Present the Findings:** The method for presenting findings depends on individual scientific positions and level. It could be in the form of a formal report and also an oral presentation. ### (D) The Distinguishing Features of Scientific Thought The main characteristics of scientific thought are: * **Objectivity:** This simply means the ability to see and accept facts as they are, not as one might wish them to be. To be objective, one has to guard against his own biases, beliefs, wishes, values and preferences. Objectivity demands that one must set aside all sorts of the subjective considerations and prejudices. * **Verifiability:** Scientific knowledge is based on verifiable evidence (concrete factual observations) so that other observers can observe, weigh or measure the same phenomena and check out observations for accuracy. * **Ethical Neutrality:** This does not mean that the scientist has no values. It only means that he must not allow his values to distort the design and conduct of his research. Thus, scientific knowledge is value-neutral or value-free. * **Systematic Exploration:** This involves a specific sequential procedure, an organized plan or design of research for collecting and analysis of facts about the problem under study. Generally, this includes a few scientific steps such as formulation of hypotheses, collection of facts, analysis of facts (classification, coding and tabulation) and scientific generalization and predication. * **Reliability:** Scientific knowledge must be reproducible under the stipulated circumstances, anywhere and anytime. Conclusions based on casual recollections are not very reliable. * **Precision:** Scientific knowledge is precise. * **Accuracy:** This simply means truth or correctness of a statement or describing things in exact words as they are without jumping to unwarranted conclusions. * **Abstractness:** Science proceeds on a plane of abstraction. A general scientific principle is highly abstract. It is not interested in giving a realistic picture. * **Predictability:** Scientists do not merely describe the phenomena being studied, they also attempt to explain and predict as well. It is typical of social sciences that they have far lower predictability compared to natural sciences. ### (E) The Fundamental Importance of Science in Acquiring Knowledge * **1. The acquisition of scientific knowledge helps to satisfy basic human needs and improve living standards.** * **2. It allows us to develop new technologies.** * **3. It helps to solve practical problems, and to make informed decisions** * **4. It increases our fundamental knowledge about the world around us.** * **5. It helps us to think, explore and question about the world around them.** * **6. It teaches you how to think analytically and to solve problems.** * **7. It helps to unlock the mysteries of the universe.** * **8. The acquisition of scientific knowledge helps us to understand the nature and structure of scientific knowledge and the process by which it is developed.**