How Does Science Differ From Other Kinds of Human Endeavors Such as Art or Philosophy
Scientific discipline refers to the system or process of acquiring cognition about the natural world. To written report the natural earth, scientists use methods that are empirical, which means that they are grounded in observations and experimentation and are not based on opinions or feelings. Scientific enquiry refers to activities and practices involving scientists' pursuit of knowledge. Scientific discipline as a way of knowing refers to the belief that the deportment of science are based on logic, evidence and reasoning. Although at that place are other ways of knowing that may be important in our personal and cultural lives, they rely on opinion, belief and other factors rather than on evidence and testing.
What Exercise Scientists Presume?
Scientists have a sure worldview about science and their piece of work. Their activities and practices are guided by the post-obit assumptions:
- The physical world is understandable.
- Scientific discipline cannot provide the answers to all questions.
- Scientific knowledge is durable, but it does non represent absolute truth.
- Scientific ideas are tentative (or subject to change).
What Makes Science Different From Other Means of Knowing?
Unlike art, philosophy, religion and other means of knowing, science is based on empirical research. A scientist conducts this research to answer a question that she or he has about the natural world. Empirical research relies on systematic ascertainment and experimentation, not on opinions and feelings. These systematic observations and experiments provide research results (evidence) that must come across two criteria in gild for a scientist's research to withstand thorough questioning. These ii criteria are validity and reliability. Validity ways that research is relevant to the question being asked. Reliability describes the repeatability or consistency of the research. Research results are considered reliable when other scientists tin perform the same experiment under the aforementioned conditions and obtain the same or similar results.
Who Are Scientists and How Do They Decide What To Study?
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Scientists come from all walks of life and all parts of the globe. Their variety allows them to look at problems from a variety of perspectives and search for answers in dissimilar means. But even though their approaches may vary, they use empirical methods of research. Considering scientific discipline and the torso of scientific noesis is so broad, virtually scientists specialize — just every bit one doctor decides to go a pediatrician, while another chooses to exist a brain surgeon. In fact, scientists often spend their entire career studying a specific topic and thus may non be qualified to evaluate the results of scientists who are working in other fields of study.
How Practise Scientists Perform Scientific Inquiry?
Scientists, like detectives, piece of work to reveal and explicate the unknown, and their enquiry methods share some similarities. The table below illustrates the similarities.
Comparing the Piece of work of Scientists and Detectives
| Scientists … | Detectives … |
|---|---|
| inquire questions to observe new information most natural phenomena. | conduct inquiries (or enquire questions) to detect what happened. |
| brand observations through scientific enquiry. | make observations through surveillance. |
| advise hypotheses based on prior cognition. | propose likely scenarios based on experience. |
| collect, clarify and translate data (evidence). | (with assistance from forensic scientists) collect, analyze and translate testify. |
| construct explanations using evidence and reasoning to justify these explanations. | construct probable scenarios using evidence and reasoning to infer or deduce what happened. |
| evaluate or critique other scientists' explanations. | evaluate alternative scenarios to exclude all other possibilities and suspects. |
| communicate their inquiry methods and findings to other scientists and the public. | present evidence to prosecutors and the courts. |
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But this is where the similarity ends. In our legal system, a jury or judge makes a decision virtually which side is right. Once the decision is made, it is usually final (apart from an appeal) considering a person can exist forced to stand trial only once for a particular law-breaking. The scientific community, however, oftentimes must consider multiple hypotheses to explain the same phenomenon, and scientific inferences are always open to reevaluation by other scientists.
Source: http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/introduction/science-way-knowing.php