Assignment Discussion - What is Science?
Purpose
Now that you have read Klemke's Science and Pseudoscience, tested your knowledge of the reading in a quiz, and explored some issues concerning the nature of science in more detail during our class meeting, you have the opportunity for additional discussion. In this forum, you can share your perspective on the reading, ask questions for discussion or clarification, articulate further thoughts, and respond to your colleagues' questions and observations.
Steps:
1. Prompt
In a new post, use the Reply button below to respond to two of the following prompts:
- In case you are left with any questions about the reading, please state them.
(Posting that you have no questions is not a satisfactory response to this prompt.)
- If there is anything that you find remarkable or problematic about the reading that has not been addressed, please state it. (Posting that there is nothing that you find remarkable or problematic is not a satisfactory response to this prompt.)
- Is there anything that you find interesting or problematic about the reading that has not been addressed, so far?
- Since empirical science always requires observation and all observations are made by individual observers, can the results of observation ever be obiective or are they necessarily relegated to subjectivity, lying in the eye of the beholder?
- Given that scientific statements are theoretical and must in principle be open to refutation, and given that in the history of science the vast majority of scientific statements have been refuted, are there any good reasons to believe in science?
- If science is what the reading suggests it is, then it seems as if some dimensions characteristic of human existence and experience are not open to scientific investigation. What are some of these dimensions? Which (non-scientific) disciplines address them?