STS MODULE 2

• pangangatwiran or test the truth (practices in our every day life)
• TEST THE TRUTH means need to know set of paradigms or sets of beliefs adhered to by scientists in assessing scientific information and in generating conclusions and knowledge using scientific approach.
• Without understanding the philosophy behind the scientific approach, there would be no originality — no independent, critical, and creative thinking
• MILESIANS (600 BC) are the first true philosophers.
• MILESIANS (600 BC) are inhabitants of the Island of Miletus.
• MILESIANS (600 BC) pondered on the question : “what is reality made of”
• Aristotle regarded Thales as the first philosopher in greek tradition.
• Attributed to Thales one of the early hypothesis about the nature matter — originating principle of nature was a single material substance which is water.
• PYTHAGORAS (571 - 491 BC) is a well-known greek mathematician (known for pythagorean theory)
• PYTHAGORAS was concerned with the nature of reality
• Pythagoras demanded that truth must be proven to be accepted.
• ARISTOTLE (384 - 322 BC) is a founder of both science and philosophy of science.
• Aristotle wrote extensively about physics, astronomy, psychology, biology and chemistry
• Aristotle is the first one to articulate the concepts of deduction and induction — naturally led to generalization.
• generalization is the key concept in knowledge generation and gives science the ability to predict rather than simply report what is happening
• PTOLEMY (AD 127 - 145) live in Alexandria.
• Full name of Ptolemy was Claudius Ptolemaeus.
• Ptolemy was an excellent mapmaker : recorded the coordinates of 8,000 locations on his world map.
• PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM / GEOCENTRIC MODEL is a model that teaches that all planets, including the sun, revolves around the earth.
• PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM / GEOCENTRIC MODEL was influential to the Roman Catholic
• FRANCIS BACON (1561 - 1626) was the seminal figure of the scientific revolution.
• Novum Organum Scientiarum — New Instruments of Science (1620) development of Aristotle’s treatise on logic and syllogism wirtten in the latter’s book “organon”.
• NOVUM ORGANUM SCIENTIARUM relied on experimental histories to eliminate alternative theories.
• NOVUM ORGANUM SCIENTIARUM promoted a scientific method in which scientists gather many facts from observation and experiments — make inductive inferences about the patterns in nature.
• Bacon means finding the essence of a thing was a simple process of reduction and the use of inductive reasoning.
• EXAMPLE OF BACON METHOD (HEAT)

  1. list all situations where heat is found (heat is common to all instances)

  2. list situations that are similar to those of the first list except they lack heat (heat is lacking from all instances)

  3. list situations that heat vary (varies by degree in instances)
• DESCARTES stated cogito ergo sum means “i think, therefore i am”
• RENE DESCARTES (1596 - 1650) was a mathematician, scientist, and philosopher who promoted scientific method that emphasized on deduction.
• Descartes influenced newton and other figures of scientific revolution.
• Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth — both a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published in 1637.
• Descartes was respected for his attempts to create a form of philosophical argument akin to science or mathematics (emphasis on perspective of consciousness in epistemology and methodology).
• Descartes believed pure reason is superior to observation
• KARL RAIMUND POPPER (1902 - 1994) was an early half of 20th century, a very significant philosophical twist in the scientific method
• Popper was a Australian-British professor at London School of Economics.
• Popper rejected the classical inductivist views on the scientific method — it is in favor to empirical falsification (view that a theory in the empirical science could never be proven, but can be falsified).
• realism / logical empiricism : modified with the views of Popper — most received view of western science in the modern period.
• SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT • U.S. Judge William R. Overton : laid a set of criteria as to what makes a scientific theory.
• SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT

  1. it must be guided by natural law
  2. it must be explanatory by reference to natural law
  3. it testable against the empirical world
  4. it conclusions are tentative
  5. it is falsifiable > we can find evidence against these theories
• SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS A process to construct a reliable, consistent and non arbitrary representation of the world
• the methodology of science is not only concerned with the discovery of knowledge, but equally also with the justification of knowledge claims.