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01-11-2008: 1st November 2008 16:45
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#12
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Full Member
Thread Starter
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Bournemouth
Posts: 109
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Re: chemistry
You only believe what you know to be true.
What relevance does this statement have to scientific thought? Advance an argument against this idea. What other factors influence scientific belief?
Intro: In a world of sensationalism and frequent exaggeration, it is often difficult to know what to believe. Of course, each individual person requires a different type and amount of proof in order to believe a piece of information. Scientists are often considered to be the most meticulous in proving a piece of information right or wrong.
Relevance to scientific thought:
-Science means “knowledge” in Latin. Very generally, the aim of science is to find and verify information about the unknown, turning this information into ‘knowledge’.
-What we know in terms of the scientific world is based on previous experience and experiments. Performing experiments allows scientists to test a hypothesis various times to see whether their results are in accordance with this hypothesis. If the same results are obtained many times, they are considered to be concordant, and the hypothesis is thus either proved correct or incorrect. Through this method, scientists ‘know’ that something is true.
Argument against:
It could be argued, however, that science relies upon the expansion of unproven ideas, as opposed to knowledge. Much scientific theory was originally thought up when a scientist challenged something which was believed to be true. For example, atoms were believed to be like the ‘plum pudding’ model. However it was not until Rutherford challenged this widely-believed model, using his gold foil experiment, that the modern atomic model was developed. Belief in only what is known to be true can limit imagination and prevent ‘thinking outside the box’, which often stimulates new ideas and ways of thinking – which can eventually prove ‘common knowledge’ wrong.
Other factors:
Experimental results- are they valid and accurate? Are they recent? How were they recorded – using modern equipment which is usually more accurate, or using subjective evidence?
Can the information be proved wrong? Sometimes scientific belief is a case of “innocent until proven guilty” – until an idea is proved wrong, as long as there is sufficient evidence, it is correct.
Conclusion:
Scientific belief always relies upon evidence - usually experimental evidence. However it often takes someone to challenge these beliefs for any theory to be improved upon or even be proved completely wrong.
I posted it anyway :P
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University course discussion for medicine.
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