WK1 L2 The scientific method Flashcards
Knowledge
a justified true belief that is held for good reasons and corresponds to reality
epistemology
the study of knowledge
acquiring knowledge
the process of gaining new beliefs and justifying them
4 mechanisms
intuition, authority, rationalism, empiricism
Simple knowledge acquisition
intuition and authority
Complex Knowledge acquisition
rationalism and empiricism
Authority
relying on experts- information given to you by someone else to acquire knowledge
Intuition AKA heuristic reasoning
relying on common sense or gut feeling to acquire knowledge
Rationalism AKA deductive reasoning
using reason and logic to acquire knowledge
Empiricism AKA Inductive reasoning
relying on observation to acquire knowledge
scientific method
set of rules, procedures and assumptions that enable us to make sense of our observations
Hallmarks of science
testability and falsification, systematic empiricism, publicly verifiable knowledge, probabilistic, tentative conclusions, deterministic, parsimonious
Testability
The assumptions that explanations can be tested and those tests can come back false
systematic empiricism
learning about the wrold through a systematic collection of data
Publicly verifiable knowledge
a process by which scientific tests and results are presented to the public in their entirety
Probabilistic
the rule that scientific theories are never 100% proven or justifiable
Tentative conclusions
The rule that scientific knowledge can change
Determinism
The assumption that phenomena, such as human behaviour, have identifiable causes
Parsimony
the rule that the simplest explanations for a phenomenon should be the one selected
