Lecture 8 - Scientific Worldviews

Question 1

(lecture):

Why do we have scientific explanations for things?

Answer 1

(lecture):

Psychological:
avoid uncertainty and conflict

Practical:
predict and control events

Question 2

(lecture):

Describe what Piaget 1934 said about the public and naive scientists.

Answer 2

(lecture):

He said that most of us are naturally naive scientists, we make mental representations of expected associations

and when we are older we have accumulated a lot of theories about our experiences.

Question 3

(lecture):

Describe the ‘gods of the gaps’

What did Popper 1953 have to say about this?

Answer 3

(lecture):

People used to come up with gods and things to try to explain natural phenomenon in life.

See slide 7

Popper said that these religious theories were unfalsifiable, so anything that happens you can manage to make it fit the theory. The problem with these theories is that they are solving the Psychological POV but not the practical POV, we cannot predict other events from religion.

Question 4

(lecture):

See slide 11

Answer 4

(lecture):

Question 5

(lecture):

Describe “Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Kuhn 1962.

Answer 5

(lecture):

See slide 12-24