10 questions on exam 1 on 1st 2 lectures
Lecture 1: January 14th, 2009
The Origins of Science and the Scientific Method
I. IONIA
-Science started in Ionia (Islands of western coast now known as Turkey) + thin strip of western coastland
Ionians: spoke Greek - most trace roots back to greece
Used the Phoenician alphabet – added vowels, very literate (greeks didn't add vowels)
Not just priests or upper echelon
No centralized government
No religion
Wouldve dictated a universal knowledge to all, but….
-Ionia was the crossroads for Greeks, Babylonians, Phonetians, Egyptians and was a center of trade between these people
-Each of these civilizations had their own set of gods
insisted that their gods were true and the others were false and made up by the priests by other civilizations
-Believed Nature was due to god's actions
Attributed nature to God
Volcanoes, earthquakes, harvest…etc.
-Ionians skeptical - why are all these different Gods used to explain the same thing??
DID NOT use the gods to explain Nature but instead used:
KNOWN AS FREE THINKING
1. Logic
2. Observation
3. Experimentation
Thales
From Amilitus - city on edege of turkey
1st to use free thinking, didn't use experimentation
Many ideas incorrect
Introduced this Free thinking method
II. PHILOSOPHERS
- 1st Century
- Anaximander (2600 years ago)
- performed the first recorded experiment
- proposed man evolved from lower animals
Helpless newborns too helpless to survive on own - must have evolved from more ind. Species.
- performed the first recorded experiment
b. Democritus (2400 years ago) – proposed the atom and "the void"
- Greek "cut" = tom,
- atom = no more cuts
- Cut through a cone the 2 sides exposed were no longer a cone
- Determine volume of cone and stacking disks on top of one another
- Recorded area of each disk, and adding them up
- Integral calculus
- Did not always follow logic of day, but fundamentally correct
-said if cut people apart into smaller and smaller pieces eventually reach something can't cut apart anymore
-wrote 73 books
- Integral calculus
c. Science stopped for a short time b/c of:
-suppression by priests
Upset that Gods were being left out of everything
-poor communication
-no proof (not technology to pass on teachings, ideas)
-Democritus not directly attacked, but attack on free thinking began in his lifetime
-destruction of writing (by other philosophers, Plato ordered burning of all of Democritus' writings, some of his books remained at Alexandria Writing Library, and they burned, but eastern scholars recorded some and brought back to their homelands and this is why we know of his ideas today)
Plato was 58 when Democritus' books
- 2nd Century A.D.
- Ptolemy (astronomer)
- Galen (anatomist)
-Ptolemy and Galen's teachings were held to be irrefutable laws and science until 1543 when entered Dark Ages
THESE guys were top in field and for 1400 years, their teachings were irrefutable evidence - dark ages
c. There was a reawakening of science with writings by:
1543
Copernicus (astronomer)
Vesalius (anatomist)
Based their ideas on own logic
d. an attempt was made to suppress writings
but technology did not allow this
-Gutenberg Press
-printing with movable type
-allowed copies and communication
-suppression no longer an option and there were too many texts to destroy
e. 1654
-Pascal and Fermat
-determined the probability of poker hands
-hired by elite Frenchmen to do this
-intro to probability calculations
f. Early 1800's
-normal distribution (bell-curve) of statistics recognized
-standardization of weights and measures improved calculations
g. William Gosset write under the anonymous name "Student"
-developed Student's T-test
-increased reliability of data extracted from small samples
Additions to Free Thinking
1. Data Collection
2. Statistical Analysis
- Scientific Method
1. Identify problem/phenomenon that one wants to explain
-Problem = applied science
-Phenomena = pure science
2. Propose a hypothesis
Use reason to determine an explanation
3. Design a repeatable experiment and carry it out
-must be able to be analyzed statistically to support hypothesis
-95% to be statistically significant
-1 in 20 false
-null/void = NOT support the hypothesis
-purported to be valid if results support hypothesis
Must be tested over and o
-Accepted hypothesis = reported to be valid hypothesis
-theory = broad, viable explanation for a phenomenon supported by a hypothesis
-NOT a blind guess
-can be shown to be invalid (NEVER rejected completely), MUST be replaced by a new theory
-accepted theory is only discarded if one can replace it
- Found by using scientific method
D. How to Rule out Skepticism
1. Throw out obvious garbage (ex. ESP, UFO, etc)
ESP has never been able to pass repeatable tests
Voyager 1 is 1/10000 speed of light - fastest object ever created by man
Voyager 1 was traveling at a speed of 17.1 kilometers per second relative to the sun (3.6 AU per year or 38,400 miles per hour or 61 600 km/h),
If going to nearest star system (40 light years away)
80,000 to get there and back
2 million yr trip to a star system 100 light yrs away
2. Consider:
anecdotal evidence or pseudoscience as FALSE
-person's story, story without statistics
Groups with an agenda
Merchandisers
Famous people in ads
Once they say "I've been asked to try this and this is what I think…" - they are telling an anecdotal story
-pseudoscience
preconceived ideas never give proof,
practiced by non-science groups,
consist of strange data, vague parameters, self-diluting logic
answering questions with questions
Never absolutely certain
Science NEVER deals with truths, only probabilities
-true science – never infallible or irrefutable
-clinical research = most amount of variables that can't be controlled (need very large groups)
-immunity studies carried out in-vitro to reduce # of variables
Might not reflect true results in vivo
Ideal experiment compares two groups, differing in one variable
- Check for undefined terms
- Was ex. Design true to hypothesis?
- Was it analyzed correctly?
- Contains ridiculous statements
- Statement that refers to "preliminary results" or initial studies or based upon one study
- Untested hypothesis
- Question whether the experiment was a real test of the hypothesis
- All variables accounted for
- Does the data support the conclusions
- Data analyzed using appropriate statistics
- Researchers use reasonable logic
- Were they looking for what they found
- Researchers can use self-diluting logic, but rarely do
- Researchers can use self-diluting logic, but rarely do
- All variables accounted for
Pasted from <file:///C:\Users\Derek\Documents\College%20Work\Rochester\Classes\Senior%20Sem.%202\Physio\Lectures\Lecture%201%20Scienctific%20Method.doc>
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