COGS 3750 Lecture Notes - Ogopogo, Headache, Schizophrenia
8 Apr 2014
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Document Summary
Science seeks knowledge and understanding of reality, and it does so through the formulation, testing, and evaluation of theories. Science is a way of searching for truth. Science is not a worldview, and we can"t identify it with a particular ideology. A particular worldview may predominate in the scientific community, but this doesn"t mean that the worldview is what science is all about. Science is not scientism it is not the only way to acquire knowledge. It is, however, our most reliable way of acquiring knowledge of empirical facts. The scientific method cannot be identified with any particular set of experimental or observational procedures. But it does involve several general steps: (1) identifying the problem, (2) devising a hypothesis, (3) deriving a test implication, (4) performing the test, and (5) accepting or rejecting the hypothesis. This kind of theory-testing is part of a broader effort to evaluate a theory against its competitors.
