Three views of science. Questions we will address today 1.What exactly do we do when we “do science”? 2.What characterizes each of three dominant “philosophies

Three views of science

Questions we will address today

1. What exactly do we do when we “do science”?

2. What characterizes each of three dominant “philosophies of science”?

3. How would you characterize Biklen’s “science”? Is it science at all?

4. Which view of science do you think characterizes work in psychology in general?

Popular conception of scienceThe "shared image" in 1955 according to Mead & Metraux (1962):

Science is a natural science …

Scientists are men who wear white coats and work in a laboratory… He is elderly or middle aged and wears glasses… He may wear a beard or be unkempt …

He is surrounded by equipment: test tubes, Bunsen burners, flasks and bottles, a jungle gym of blown glass tubes and weird machines with dials …

He spends his days doing experiments. He pours chemicals from one test tube into another… He peers raptly through microscopes… He scans the heavens through a telescope… He experiments with plants and animals, cutting them apart, injecting serum into animals … He writes neatly in black notebooks…

Has science changed? What influences the way scientists do their work?

Overview: Three view of science Inductivism Popper Kuhn

Basis of scientific investigation

Observations Problems Paradigms

Aim of scientific investigation

True theories or laws of nature

Theories or laws of greater verisimilitude

Paradigm elaboration leading to occasional revolutions

Means of scientific investigation

The use of observations to obtain and verify hypotheses

Criticism Solving puzzles set by paradigm

Empirical science and “laws”

What is a law?

Examples:

Law of Large Numbers – mean of sample will equal mean of population as sample size increases to infinity.

Inverse Square Law – strength of gravitational (electrical) force between two objects varies inversely as the square of the distance apart.

What are the basic features of inductivism?

Observing the world Amassing observations Classifying observations Developing theories Verifying.

Other notions of inductivism – world lies outside you, knowledge is based on meeting the world, tabula rasa.

Hume’s argument:

Q: Can you ever verify anything 100%?

A: No

Implication: All knowledge is conjectural.

Popper’s Conjectures and Refutations

How to know where to look?

Must have some preconceived ideas.

Where do these ideas come from?

What does this say about scientific theory, laws, knowledge?

What was Popper’s argument against inductivism?

Popper and the “asymmetry of scientific discovery”

How many observations does it take to reject a hypothesis?

How many observations does it take to verify a hypothesis?

Criterion of demarcation(separates scientific from non-scientific)

Falsification

Which of the following are falsifiable statements:

It will rain. It will not rain tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. All swans are white. All planets move in circular orbits. Light bends going around the sun. All behavior reflects instinctual expression.

How is Popper’s notion of empiricism different from inductivists?

What is the difference between

“submitting hypotheses to test in the real world”

vs.

“seeking confirmation in the real world”?

What is the aim of science for Popper?To reach “truth”?

What is “informative content” “verisimilitude”?

So, does Popper believe that science progresses?

Is the progress of science rational?

So how should we "do business" as scientists?

Apply the most severe tests of our hypotheses that we can…Does that really go on?

How do we test hypotheses?…Look and see…

Biklen & Cardinal (p. 29)The question “are people able to convey their own thoughts” is not answered when someone fails to convey the expected answer to a question…The only thing revealed is that the person did not answer these questions, gave incorrect answers, or gave some other response. It does not explain how a person might respond to a different question or, perhaps more importantly, how the person might respond under different circumstances. Similarly, failing to respond in sentence-level communication does not prove that the person lacks literacy skills. It is conceivable that under different circumstances or with different context, the person would respond differently.

Biklen & Cardinal (p. 30)If researchers…treat the given test results as actually capable of determining who can communicate and who cannot, then they render the test more than a mere representation of facilitation. …What we observe happening with testing of facilitated communication is that the purpose of testing—to find out something specific about the person, to prove the person’s competence—somehow gets transformed; instead of helping the person examined, it can become a serious impediment to the test takers if, for whatever reason, failure on the test becomes fodder for an argument that none can pass, that the method is unreliable, that the method is dangerous, and that science has spoken.

Cardinal & Biklen (p. 201)Our approach has been to challenge the peculiarly modernist notion of inviolable objectivism (i.e., presuming social science facts are not socially created) in deference to the proposition that all ideas are imbued with values, all ideas are contextualized. We embrace careful observation, systematic investigation, and other qualities of being objective, but always within a recognition that ideas carry with them assumptions and interests. Our ideas, as anyone’s, can be located within a paradigm that “might be viewed as in opposition or in support of the dominant ideology, but it cannot be judged independently of it.”











On to Kuhn…

How do "communities of scientists differ"?

Hint: Look at different "schools" of psychology.

The study of intelligence, the SAT, and Holy Cross

Is intelligence a characteristic of the person that is inborn, largely fixed, measurable, and distributed more or less normally in the population (intelligence is a trait, part of our nature at birth)?

Or

Is intelligence characterizes behavior that develops over time in particular conditions and circumstances (intelligent behavior is changeable and nurtured)?

What do you see?

The primary objects of the Gaussian Law of Error were exactly opposed, in one sense, to those to which I applied them. They were to get rid of, or provide a just allowance for, errors. But these errors, or deviations, were the very things I wanted to preserve and to know about.

Francis Galton (1908).

Memories of my life

The SAT and Holy Cross

The SAT is the measure of intelligence that predicts the 2% of the population that will be most apt to succeed in college.

Carl Brigham, CEEB, 1930.

Does the SAT predict who will succeed at Holy Cross? Should we use the SAT in admissions?

Paradigms

A “community” of scientific activity

Metaphysical assumptions. Problems Methods and standards for solution Instruments and “designs” used Publication and presentation outlets Presentation style, language Funding sources

“Normal” science and it’s “puzzles”

Normal scientific puzzles are a species of problem. The distinctive feature of this type of problem is that the paradigm usually suggests the nature of the required result. What is problematic about normal scientific puzzles is not the result or solution so much as the way to achieve it …

Though the outcome to such puzzles is frequently anticipated, of in detail so great that what remains to be know is itself uninteresting, the way to achieve that outcome remains very much in doubt. Bringing a normal research problem to a conclusion is achieving the anticipated in a new way, and it requires the solution of all sorts of complex instrumental, conceptual, and mathematical puzzles.

Thomas Kuhn (1973)The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Comparing Kuhn’s “normal” science with Popper’s scientific practice

Does theory come before or after observation for Popper? For Kuhn?

Are problems set so that theories are critically tested and "tossed" if falsified, according to Kuhn?

Is the community of scientists an "open" society or marketplace or ideas according to Popper? Kuhn?

Kuhn’s “Scientific Revolutions” Paradigms are articulated in

“normal science”… “puzzles” are solved…

Paradigms are overthrown in “scientific revolutions”…new paradigms explain all that is explained in the old, plus account for “anomalies”.

Three “scientific revolutions”

Copernican revolution

Modern physics

Platectonics











Documents

Three views of science. Questions we will address today 1.What exactly do we do when we “do science”? 2.What characterizes each of three dominant “philosophies