SCIE: UNIT 3

• Conceit of Nations


  Glorifying past societies as having unmatched intellectual and moral greatness compared to today
• Conceit of Scholars


  Dismissing past individuals as ignorant and having nothing valuable to offer to current knowledge
• Science emerges from

  The sense of curiosity about the world
• Drives scientists to ask


  • Fundamental questions about life: who are we? Where we come from? What our future holds?
• Scientists


  • Pose questions & hypotheses as a means to satisfy their curiosity and seek deep understanding
• Scientific inquiries aim to

  • Generalize principles and laws to apply them broadly across different phenomena
• Characteristics of a good question


  • Has depth: it goes to the heart of the situation
  • Is tantalizing: it seems to hold out the possibility of an answer
  • It is suggestive: it almost tells one how to look for an answer
  • It is fruitful: the answer, when obtained, will have significant meaning for several areas of science
• Criteria for a valid answer in science


  • No answer can imply the violation of an established empirical fact, unless it also offers an explanation that shows why the cases in which this violation will occur are ones that have as yet not been observed. In this case, it offers predictions that can be tested.
  • Every answer must either be consistent with existing theories, or provide a good reason for changing these theories.
  • No answer can involve a logical contradiction.
• Types of questions in science

  • Verification questions - basic data collecting questions useful in building knowledge
  • Significant/Theory questions which require an explanation and prior knowledge. Ex: Do clouds have to be in the sky for it to rain?
  • Experimental questions requiring explanations, prior knowledge and are testable. Ex: If salt is added to water, would the solution still boil at the same temperature
• Roland Omnès's four stages of scientific activity

  1. Exploratory Stage: Observation of facts, performing experiments, compiling data, discovering empirical rules

  2. Conceptual Stage: Developing and selecting appropriate concepts to represent reality, inventing principles

  3. Developmental Stage: Examining all possible consequences of the principles

  4. Verification Stage: Systematically subjecting each prediction to the test of experience
• Ways scientific discoveries have been made

  • Looking for patterns and the discovery of the periodic table of elements
  • Increased instrumentation and the discovery of microbes using the microscope
  • Discrepancies - noting any differences in data that arise from experiments or research that should not warrant any discrepancies
• Evidence that led Snow to his discovery of how cholera is transmitted

  • Some people who came into close personal contact contracted the disease while others, namely physicians who often washed their hands, did not contract the disease
  • Some people contracted the disease when an outbreak was nowhere in close proximity
• How Snow answered the questions in his research

  1. Why didn't everybody get sick who came into contact with a cholera patient? He looked into what things were done by some and not by others such as washing hands or touching bed linens.

  2. What link, if any, did water supply have to do with cholera transmission rates? Snow studied two groups that he randomized for both education, wealth and status into groups of where they received their water. One company came from upstream and therefore before sewage contamination and one company from downstream and did contain sewage contamination. Snow accumulated cholera deaths in the populations supplied by each water company.