1: Introduction

Question 1

What is geology?

Answer 1

The scientific study of the Earth

Question 2

What is Environmental Geology

Answer 2

A branch of applied geology

• helps solve conflicts in land use
• minimizes environmental degradation
• maximizes the beneficial results of using our natural and modified environments

Question 3

What is science?

Answer 3

• Scientia - knowledge

Question 4

Science in classical antiquity and the middle ages

Answer 4

sought a unified theory of all reality and experience

Question 5

Science after the 17th and 18th centuries

Answer 5

• age of discovery, industrial and social revolutions
• fragmentation of knowledge
  
  • early modern science (“natural philosophy”) separated from other fields
  • nature + philosophy = natural philosophy
  • modern geology developed in Scotland in the 1780’s and 1790’s

Question 6

Limits of (natural) science

Answer 6

• Science is restricted to investigating the natural world
• Science seeks natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us
• Science does not directly deal with questions of ultimate reality
• Science does not directly deal with questions of ethical judgments of values
• Science is only as good as its underlying philosophical assumptions

Question 7

Philosophical assumptions of modern Science

Answer 7

• There is a physical universe that exists and can be explored by our senses
• The physical universe is orderly, at least on some level
• Uniformitarianism

Question 8

Uniformitarianism

Answer 8

• natural processes operating in the past are the same as those that can be observed operating in the present
• “the present is the key to the past”
• does NOT necessarily mean that rates of natural processes have always been constant

Question 9

The “scientific method” step 1

Answer 9

Observation: you see an apple fall out of a tree

Question 10

What is a model (from scientific method)

Answer 10

a representation of an object or system; can be abstract, mathematical, physical, etc.

Question 11

Scientific Method step 2

Answer 11

Question: what makes it fall?

Question 12

Scientific Method step 3

Answer 12

Hypothesis

• Possible answer to the question
• Educated guess
• Testable
  - Be able to prove they are wrong

Question 13

Scientific Method step 4

Answer 13

Test

• By performing an experiment
• May involve making a model
  
  • Why use sphere stuff when earth isn’t perfectly spherical?
    
    • close enough
• By making a prediction followed by more observation

Question 14

Scientific Method step 5

Answer 14

Theory

- a hypothesis which has withstood many attempts to disprove it.

Question 15

Scientific method possible step 6

Answer 15

Law?
- a law is merely a generalization of how nature works; it does not attempt to explain why it works the way it does
Fact?

Question 16

Problems with the simplified scientific method

Answer 16

• Human reasoning is not always purely inductive
• Scientist are human beings, not machines. They have:
  
  • pre-existing biases and prejudices
  • misconceptions and limited ranges of experience
  • a knack for making mistakes