The first part of the reading is about the history of the writer, Richard. The whole thing is just him wanting us to appreiat3e what we have
Uncertainty of science
Nature of science and existence of doubt and uncertainty
Ideas are born every day and is developed in the history of man, ideas dont last unless they are pass purposely.
Science is sometimes means:
- Body of knwoledge beig found out
-Doing of new things you have just found out
- Special method of finding things out
- Actual doing of new things
Science is partly technology
News things we can do
- Science creates a lot of possibilities like industrial revolution
- Controlling sickness
- Scientific means of production
Science is like a power, can be use for good or evil depending how we use it.
- Airplanes
- Airplanes for war
Is science of any value?
- To do something has value, the power is value.
- Result is depending on how we use it
Contents of science
The work is not done for the sake for application but for the excitement of what is found out. We need to understand the purpose before understand what it is.
Appreciation of living things. We are so use to live in the pov of living thing that we cannot appreciate what that feels to be living. All live is interconnected with all other life.
Newspaper inform us about the discovery of new cures but not the value
However, trying to understand the way nature works uses a terrible test of human reasoning ability - confirmation bias. Wanting to get the answer and thus quickly proving it.
Science is a method of finding things out
Observation is the judge whether something is so or not. All aspect and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of truth.
Prove contradiction is the only way to prove the rule wrong.
The scientist tries to find more exceptions and to determine the characteriscirc of the exception. They try to prove himself wrong as quickly as possible.
Just because things are left out does not mean its unimportant, method just does not work. Scientist only anaylyze things that can be observed and leave others out.
Observation
- Observation cannot be rough
- Check carefully
- Understand conditions carefully
- Don't misinterpret what we do
- Do it throughly
Objectivity
- Look at results with different pov
- Result may varies
- We may like it to be a certain way so it comes out that way
Specific rule
- Interesting to test
- More powerful
- More liable to exception
- More valuable to check
Origins of Ideas
- Observations
- Imagination
- Check if its correct so we don't need to know about where it come from
- Its hard to think of a new ideas
- Human relationships can become unargumentative
Changing of laws
- Experiments are inaccurate
- laws are not observations
- Good guesses that have went through sieves
- Nothing can be stated precisely
- Conclusions are uncertain so is scientific knowledge
Doubt is a value in science