SOCL 2211 Chapter : Human Inquiry And Science
Document Summary
Part of being a member of a group is knowing the same things that the group. Because you can"t learn all you need to know through personal experience and discovery alone, things are set up so you can simply believe what others tell you. You know some things through tradition, others from. There are other ways of knowing things, however. In contrast to knowing things through agreement, you can know them through direct experience through observation. If you dive into a glacial stream flowing through the canadian rockies you don"t need anyone to tell you it"s cold. When your experience conflicts with what everyone else knows, though, there"s a good chance you"ll surrender your experience in favor of agreement. Science is one way people try to answer the question of how we can know what"s really real. Scientists have certain criteria that must be met before they"ll accept the reality of something they haven"t personally experienced.
