ENV100H1 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Environmental Racism, William Golding, James Lovelock

• School: UTSG
• Department: School of Environment
• Course: ENV100H1
• Professor: Simon Appolloni

Document Summary

Key idea: reality is observable, predictable and understandable. Empiricism = knowledge is derived from sense experience, and thus, observable and measurable: knowledge/findings are tangible. Testability = a scientific claim must be measurable against reality. Reproducibility = given the same conditions, a repeat of a test must produce the same results, regardless of whom is performing the test. Falsifiability = a scientific claim must survive attempts to disprove its truth. This is why science, as a means for understanding our world is so powerful: natural sciences, social sciences. There are two concepts which describe how we understand our universe: observations what we sense. Our observations contribute to our theories, and our theories shape our observations: theory = understanding of how our worlds work/what we think is going on. Hypothesis = early steps of a theory, an idea of how the world works beginning to test.