Week 1 Flashcards
What are the four main methods of acquiring knowledge?
Intuition, Authority, Rationalism and Empiricism.
What is intuition?
The acquisition of knowledge in the absence of reason.
What is the acquisition of knowledge through authority?
The acquisition of knowledge through trusted or respected sources.
What is rationalism?
The acquisition of knowledge through reason and logic alone.
What is empiricism?
The acquisition of knowledge through experience.
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What is science?
A method of building and organising knowledge in a way that is testable and predictive.
What is inductive reasoning?
Using to specific observations to form a general explanation and prediction.
What is deductive reasoning?
Using general observations to form specific explanations and predictions.
Define “Hypothesis”
A proposed explanation of a phenomenon based of limited evidence.
What is hypothesis testing?
The process of testing a hypothesis by making systematic observations regarding the hypothesis and then comparing the observed data with the hypothesis.
What is logical positivism?
A scientific methodology originating in Vienna that focuses on verifying a hypothesis.
What is Falsification?
A scientific methodology introduced by Karl Popper that focuses on falsifying a hypothesis.
What is the Duhem-Quine principle?
A philosophical idea which suggests that testing a hypothesis cannot be done in isolation from other assumptions and those assumptions are possibly false.
What is naturalism?
The philosophical idea that only natural laws operate in the universe and that science should be able to justify it’s practices and methods according to what works rather than philosophical arguments.
What is empirical adequacy?
How well empirical evidence aligns with a theory.
- Does the evidence support the theory?
- Does the theory make accurate and consistent predictions?
- Does the theory offer a strong causal description or explanation for the phenomenon?
Define “Paradigm”
A framework of thought or beliefs in which reality is interpreted.
Define “Normal science” according in Thomas Kuhn.
A period in which science is governed or directed by a single paradigm.
Define “Revolutionary science” according to Thomas Kuhn.
A period in which science transitions into another paradigm.
What are the basic assumptions underlying scientific research?
Regularity, determinism, probabilistic causes, reality in nature, and discoverability.
What is the assumption of regularity?
Science assumes that nature has uniformity, regularity and lawful relationships.
What is the assumption of determinism?
Science assumes that everything the natural is governed by cause and effect, this deterministic idea carries over into behavioural and cognitive processes.
What is the assumption of probabilistic cause?
When determinism is hard to identify, science makes the assumption that there are regularities that occur usually but not always, in other words, there is a probability that they will occur.
What is the assumption of reality of nature?
Science makes the assumption that the things we interact with are real.
What is the assumption of discoverability?
Science makes the assumption that if the world around us that we interact with is real, then it has to be discoverable.
What is operationalism?
Representing constructs or variables by the operations in which they can be measured.
What is multiple operationalism?
Using multiple operational definitions to represent a construct or variable.
What are operational definitions sometimes called?
Operationalisation (of a variable or construct).
What is replication?
Replication is the reproduction of experiments that have been conducted in the past in order to determine the reliability of the evidence.
What is meta-analysis?
A method used to integrate and explain the relationship between variables across multiple studies.
What is a theory?
A theory is an explanation of how and why something happens.
What is the logic of discovery?
The inductive portion of scientific research.
What is the logic of justification?
The deductive portion of scientific research that is used to test the inductive portion (logic of discovery).
What are some of the characteristics that are important for scientists to have?
Curiosity, patience, objectivity and willingness to change.
What are the objectives of scientific research?
To describe, explain, predict, control and influence the phenomenon that is being researched.
What is pseudoscience?
Beliefs and practices that claim to be scientific but are not scientific.
