The+Natural+Sciences

Chemistry Biology Astronomy Geology Meteorology Earth Science Genetics Philosophy Politics Alchemy Paranormal Studies (Pseudoscience) Psychology
 * The Natural Sciences || Not Natural Sciences
 * Physics
 * Physics
 * Religion (Study of Beliefs)

One good example of Paradigm shift that had completely changed how people view time is the Theory of Relativity because it is that the people of today's generation do not view time as a barrier but rather they view it as another space or dimension that is waiting to be surpassed. It is because of Albert Einstein that how Science was viewed by people as pathway or a medium in opening a new era of learning and discoveries that hold no certainty. But in comparing how I view the world now, I know one Paradigm shift that has completely changed the way of my view of the world is that the revolutionary Hybrid cars as an new alternative for gasoline-consuming cars that were made since the 1672 in China that was used to carry the Emperor around the country. But now that Hybrid cars had come to life since 2000, it was a fine example how transportation in the world has changed. In the USA, my aunt had bought a 2007 Toyota Prius, which was a new line of hybrid cars that came out, which used self-producing electricity from stored water inside it and combining the carbon dioxide and nitrogen that is evident in the atmosphere so it has almost practically unlimited source of energy and runs up to a satisfying 72 mph, not bad for a hybrid car compared to other diesel-consuming cars. It had changed how I view the world as it gave light to me that in the future that I would purchase a hybrid car and not a diesel-run car because I know that with this choice of mine, I will contribute less emissions to the greenhouse gases that most of the people neglect up until now. I know that in my own perspective, in a small way, I am helping save the world with this new line of technology that will someday help us secure our future by not destroying our ozone layer, which protects us from the harmful UV rays of the Sun. Another is that how I view learning compared from the old traditional follow the teacher and just memorization but know in today's world, it is learning to challenge and question theories that before were meant to be just followed.

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Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Unit"

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” - Nancy Willard

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” - Albert Einstein

Carl Sagan is probably one of the most brightest minds of the 20th Century and he had studied upon many different things and for him, he had personally followed a series of steps that helped him a lot in establishing strong views to defend his studies with these steps. As he had said that inn any given situation, wherever possible, there must be independent confirmation of the facts present. It is also about arguments from authority carry little weight for in science, there is no authority. It also states that one should try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours and that whenever possible, quantifying must be done and if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler. It is also stated that whenever there is a hypothesis, ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified. Conduct control experiments is also beneficial especially in observing "double blind" experiments. But in order to do so, one must check for confounding factors by separating the variables. "Ad Hominem" is also mentioned in the article, which means attacking the arguer rather than the argument. There are different types of arguments that can possibly be questioned or rather attacked; argument from authority and argument from adverse consequences. And in attacking these types of arguments, one must appeal to ignorance, consolidate for special pleading, begging the question for an answer within the phrasing of the question, and having observational selection of statistics of small numbers but there is also a misunderstanding of nature of statistics itself as inconsistency in it is very evident and cannot be ignored so easily thus it doesn't follow the logic or in other words, "Non Sequitur". It is most linked with "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc", meaning "It happened after so it was caused by.", as there is confusion of cause and effect. Meaningless questions is another critical factor in the process as it requires an excluded middle, which means that there are only the two extremes that are considered in a range of possibilities. And from this, confusion of correlation and causation occurs as there are suppressed evidences or half-truths. A good example are the Weasel Words such as use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential Powers and an important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions, which under old names have become odious to the public. And as I look at this short summary of Sagan's work, I agree in certain aspects of Sagan's work especially on some aspects of skepticism as to question something to come to an answer with the help of creating a toolbox of skeptical thinking to guide people in making sure that their argument is strong. And I also agree to Sagan's argument that skepticism is a necessity in today's modern world because if people are does not question any knowledge whether there is enough proof or not, it would prove that people become gullible and easily deceived by things such as biased advertising. People must learn to challenge existing knowledge in order to come to a higher place in coming up with an answer. People must not be also overly attached to a hypothesis because it belongs to that person. People must also learn that once his eye is caught by a "fancy" hypothesis, he must not stop searching for more possible hypotheses that could be even better. And in today's world, our society's modern paradigm has shifted for the last 300 years from religion as a dominant authority to science as today's modern dominant authority but scientists also tells us that we must come to realize that authority carries a small role nowadays and we must learn to do healthy skepticism in asking everything and that in any hypothesis, we must never be attached to it because again it all goes back to it being possibly falsified now or maybe in the future.

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**//How different are the knowledge claims of those disciplines that are primarily historical, such as evolutionary biology, cosmology, geology and paleontology, from those that are primarily experimental, such as physics and chemistry?//**

Science is classified into two types of disciplines are historical and experimental and there are a lot of differences in historical and experimental fields of discipline in science as there are a lot of different aspects to its learning in how to acquire knowledge from it and how to apply the knowledge gained from it. In the field of historical based disciplines of science such as evolutionary biology, cosmology, geology and paleontology; it is because of the history recorded in the past thousands of years. These disciplines base more of its data in acknowledgement of what has happened like in evolutionary biology when the according to records and studies of fossils excavated from South Pacific Islands, there was a lot of evidence that there was a lot of possibility that from tiny micro bacterias form the different larger organisms such as plants, animals, and even us humans. Evolutionary biology is a strong base of different studies of disciplines of science that are solely based on historical data. Another strong example is that of paleontology, which is the study of prehistoric life. The word itself that it studies, "pre-historic", clearly defines that it's bases of studies are organisms that lived in maybe the past thousands of years. Such studies are limited to themselves in only uncovering new discoveries of the past that one may never determine how many discoveries are to be made but sooner or later there will be a limit to how many discoveries are to be found. Whilst in the fields of experimental disciplines of science such as physics and chemistry, the possibilities of creating new things are almost endless but as the time progresses, these discoveries become more and more complex than ever. Such as the discovery of medicines like penicillin, these discoveries were made through a series of experiments that were conducted by Alexander Fleming. Fleming didn't just find did all the work overnight. He did it in a series of experiments that he conducted for years and that he based his work on previous data that was done even by the ancient Greeks and ancient Indians thousands of years ago. It is also mentioned that some other notable scientist including Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur. So in essence, this example of experimental discipline of science proves that it also has the element of history in it to base upon and from those historical records, one creates or forms new branches of old discoveries through experimentation. And as such, they are endless as in today's world, some old discoveries from before are found to have other alternative uses or purpose such as biofuels. Before, there was no such thing as biofuels that are made of decomposed materials or organic materials, it was just petroleum that was used before. But recently, there are discoveries of new purpose for organic materials and decomposed materials for biofuels that have been successfully approved in different places around the world and these discoveries were made by different series of experimentations that were conducted in years. And so in looking at experimental disciplines and historical disciplines of science, one cannot say that one is totally different from another. Each one of them need one another to sustain the process needed to make such discoveries either from the past or from the future.

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Brian Greene's Fabric of the "Cosmos"

What had made people like Einstein disproves the theory that the universe is “grand” clockwork and why?

What were the reasons of the scientists of the 16th century to perceive the universe as fixed giant clockwork of time that has a predictable future? And if so, why?

-	One’s life will be more fulfilling if one understands the true nature of the universe. -	During the time of Newton and Galileo, it was said that they only focused their studies on things that one may experience in daily life (e.g. Newton experimenting on how gravity works) -	Quantum mechanics was introduced by scientists in the 1930’s and according to them, even if one can come up with the most accurate measurements there is on a subject, it would not matter for in quantum mechanics, it doesn’t coincide with the present state of a subject but rather it plays on the game of chance -	Our society isn’t used to a reality that is solely unclear until it has been fully perceived physically rather it has been more focused on predicting of what will happen in the future -	Over the last century, our society has only been experiencing a glimmer of a larger reality than what we have thought of it to be -	In the past, we have tended to look upon the universe of a macro scale but now in today’s modern society, we are looking into the perspective of the universe in a smaller sub-atomic level -	Our large scale view of time becomes focused at a moment’s glance and as more questions come out of it, it becomes more mysterious and more uncertain and unclear to our perspective, which is in essence the reality that is being presented by quantum mechanics

Examples of Ways of Knowing in the reading: -	Perception Greene describes perception constantly changing throughout history and that the changes the ways we perceive things have completely changed the way people think like during the Medieval Times where people were imposed to see things in a religious perspective and when the golden age of science in the 16th century has arrived, people see things in a different perspective and as we continuously move through time, our society begins to accept the norm of questioning everything in order to learn and understand a concept. -	Emotion People’s emotions in a sense, can either help us or not in perceiving and understanding the universe in different ways. Today’s scientists can be said to be not involving their emotion to their work unless they are in a way of supporting an extremity. -	Reason Our reasoning is affected by many different factors but majority of the populations is affected by the major paradigms in our history that has been embraced by the majority. People also are moved by circumstances we experience in everyday life as to most of us in today’s world, time exists only in the present place we are in time. -	Language Greene doesn’t directly talk about the role of language throughout the reading but in general, he elaborates that the role of paradigms either in science or culture, has played a major role in answering all the questions that face today’s society in perceiving a concept or a subject. We tend to understand one another all the time if we are talking about a common knowledge that has been caused by a modern paradigm and it has been wholly accepted by society.

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============================================================================================================== How different are the knowledge claims of those disciplines that are primarily historical, such as evolutionary biology, cosmology, geology and paleontology, from those that are primarily experimental, such as physics and chemistry?

-Knowledge claims from either disciplines that are historical and disciplines that are experiments may differ in several ways because:

1) Knowledge claims from disciplines of experiments base their knowledge claims on existing knowledge either theoretical or proven, they conduct a series of experiments to come up with a result that one would expect to be the same as one's hypothesis. 2) On the other hand knowledge claims from disciplines of historical events base their knowledge claims on past data such as fossils for paleontology, events from major shifting of Tectonic plates in the past thousands of years, which are used to create data basing it on previous data. 3) One could say knowledge claims from either disciplines either experimental or historical, change over as time passes by and this happens as their are major shifts happening around the surroundings that affect the outcome of the established knowledge claims therefore, these established knowledge claims are either changed or completely removed to be replaced by new knowledge claims.

What kinds of explanations do scientists offer, and how do these explanations compare with those offered in other areas of knowledge? What are the differences between theories and myths as forms of explanation?

1) Scientists doesn't give answers just randomly without basis. Scientist conduct a series of experiments that is based on a hypothesis or a theory to either prove a new knowledge claim or disprove or support an existing knowledge claim. 2) Scientists tend to be arguing with each other because since most of scientists base their knowledge claims from different theories and such that it takes a longer period of time for scientist to arrive with a formal establishment of a knowledge claim even if the claim has sufficient evidence to be proven. 3) Proven knowledge claims by scientist are very hard to counter or disprove as they contain much needed sufficient evidence that had underwent a series of not only experiments but also monitoring and debating over by other scientist or critics and so making proven knowledge claims by scientist a very strong and well-supported knowledge claim. 4) These knowledge claims are also very established and very reliable claims because they range from different sorts of category and such an example of a range is from the most common object to the most complex ideas. 5) Such fine examples of well-established and strong knowledge claims is that of Isaac Newton's Law of Gravity, which is very hard to disprove because it not only has been studied and experimented upon for years by Newton but it also applies to real life as there is existing gravitational pull in our planet, which seems to prove right of Newton's Law of Gravity.

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============================================================================================================== Focus Activity 3: Setting Priorities

You have a “basket of goods” as follows:

Play Station, a good education, clean air, a meat burger, a pet, a vacation in Hawaii, healthy teeth, peace in Darfur, a good road.*

1. Rank the items in the basket from what you think you need most to need least. Discuss your lists with others. What items were at the top and which items were at the bottom? Why? Do the lists differ in any way? If so, why?

My list of priorities on the contents inside the basket of goods:

a. Good Education (Without it, there would be no thinking to be going on for someone to make an innovation or a development to a certain object without relying on probability) b. Clean Air (Without it, it wouldn't be possible to live a long life as polluted air will cause disease and may shorten one's life in most cases) c. Peace in Darfur (Without it, it could trigger a series of "domino" effect of wars that will result from existing conflict and may cause doomsday to our world so to speak) d. Healthy Teeth (Without it, one cannot advocate in maintaining one's self-consciousness of being clean as one should set a good example for others to follow) e. Meat Burger (without it, there would a large number of recipes or concoctions that require meat burger such as burger, spaghetti and may more) f. Pet (Without it, one who lives alone, loner in street language, by himself wouldn't have any companion with him causing psychological depression and may lead to committing suicide) g. Vacation in Hawaii (Without it, one cannot have form of relaxation to relieve himself or herself from her responsibilities, once in a while) h. Good road (Without it, one cannot travel to places that are inter-connected by land) i. Play Station (Just for entertainment)

2. Now imagine you have $100 to spend. Attach an economic value to each of the items. How much of the $100 are you willing to spend on each item? Have your rankings changed? If so, why?

a. Good Education ($30) b. Clean Air ($22.50) c. Peace in Darfur ($20) d. Healthy Teeth ($15) e. Meat Burger ($5) f. Pet($2.50) g. Play Station ($2.50) h. Good road ($ 1.25) i. Vacation in Hawaii ($1.25)

3. Is there a conflict between what we think is important and the financial value that we attach to those things? What difficulties did you experience in trying to attach a monetary value to the things in your list? Can your two lists be reconciled?

4. Consider a student living in a very different country from yours. Specify the country and construct the priorities that you think that person would set. Justify your responses. What issues arise when people prioritize for others?

5. On what sound basis and assumptions does the discipline of economics rest?

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