PSYC2242 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Milgram Experiment, Germ Theory Of Disease, Bridgeport, Connecticut
Document Summary
Bacon, skinner, introductory textbooks all support this view. Psychology of perception says observation requires concepts, attention, grouping, interests, learning. It is naive to think you can make observations without presupposed ideas concepts, motives, etc. It is what separates science from other roads to knowledge. I. e. , reliance on theory alone; reliance on authority. Physics (quantum mechanics - completely counterintuitive), geology (plate tectonics), biology (evolution), etc. To think that you can just open your eyes and make pure observations is a muth. What is attended to, what is selected, all comes from theory. How observations are grouped into categories comes from theory. Observation depends on expectations, context, interests, past experience, goals, and so on. Theory consists of 2 things: concepts and propositions. Concepts principles of grouping/ordering objects or events. Divide the world into people and not-people, chairs and not-chairs, etc. Science has a different way of doing this: hue, saturation, brightness. All colors can be described in terms of these different dimensions.
