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The facts are coming! The facts are coming!

The facts are coming! The facts are coming!. TaK – Natural Sciences. What are the Natural Sciences? What differentiates them from the Human Sciences? And from other Areas of Knowledge?. TaK – Natural Sciences. 1543. Where do we begin?. TaK – Natural Sciences. Ptolemy 90 – c.168 AD.

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The facts are coming! The facts are coming!

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  1. The facts are coming! The facts are coming!

  2. TaK – Natural Sciences • What are the Natural Sciences? • What differentiates them from the Human Sciences? • And from other Areas of Knowledge?

  3. TaK – Natural Sciences 1543 Where do we begin?

  4. TaK – Natural Sciences Ptolemy 90 – c.168 AD Copernicus

  5. TaK – Natural Sciences • Key to the discoveries and developments of science have been: • Proper standards of measurement • Paper & printing • A common language of scholarship • Developments in instrumentation

  6. 600 Light years from us

  7. Ursa Major NGC 3310

  8. 46 million light years away from us Speed of light: 300,000 kms/second http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zzfCS_UYnc&feature=relmfu NGC 3310 26,000 light years in diameter There are more than 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe

  9. The Hubble Extreme Deep Field NGC 3310 26,000 light years in diameter There are more than 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe

  10. The Hubble Extreme Deep Field NGC 3310 26,000 light years in diameter There are more than 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe

  11. TaK – Natural Sciences With telescopes and microscopes, enquirers (scientists) have made rapid progress in putting questions to nature, and in formulating answers

  12. TaK – Natural Sciences Can you think of examples of things that were believed to be true by earlier scientists, but which we now know to be false?

  13. But Bob …in a quantum world - how can we be sure? Oh Alice… you’re the one for me!

  14. TaK – Natural Sciences “Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house” Henri Poincare

  15. TaK – Natural Sciences “We found that the theory did not fit the facts – and we were delighted, because this is how science advances” O.R. Frisch

  16. TaK – Natural Sciences “The progress of science is strewn, like an ancient desert trail, with the bleached skeletons of discarded theories which once seemed to possess eternal life” Arthur Koestler

  17. TaK – Natural Sciences “Science is a way of thinking more than it is a body of knowledge” Carl Sagan

  18. TaK – Natural Sciences • Searching for, • and finding, ‘Patterns’: • All bodies fall to earth • All plants… • All metals… • All liquids… • All ecosystems… • All chromosomes…

  19. TaK – Natural Sciences How do we study the Sciences?

  20. TaK – Natural Sciences The scientific method Put in order: Test with experiments Ask questions Think! Try again Draw conclusion Report results Background research Observation Construct hypothesis Analyze results

  21. TaK – Natural Sciences Observation Ask question Background research Analyze results Test with experiment Construct hypothesis Hypothesis is False or partially True Think! Try again Draw conclusion Hypothesis is True Report results

  22. TaK – Natural Sciences • ….. from Results you may be able to • develop a Law* which can then lead to a Theory*. • *A scientific Law is a distillation of the results of repeated observation. It does not offer an explanation of phenomena. • *A Theory explains a wide range of phenomena on the basis of a small number of key ideas. A model of reality.

  23. TaK – Natural Sciences “We’ve discovered a massive dust and gas cloud which is either the beginning of a new star, or just an awful lot of dust and gas.”

  24. TaK – Natural Sciences The scientific method What makes a hypothesis a good hypothesis?

  25. TaK – Natural Sciences The scientific method • Problems with Observation: • Relevance • Selectivity • Expectations • Expert seeing • Observer effect

  26. TaK – Natural Sciences The scientific method • Problems with testing Hypotheses: • Confirmation bias • Background assumptions • ??

  27. TaK – Natural Sciences

  28. TaK – Natural Sciences • Problems with Induction: • Reasoning from the observed, to the unobserved • How many observations should be made before we jump to a generalisation?

  29. TaK – Natural Sciences Searching for, and finding, ‘Patterns’:

  30. Which figure completes the series? ?

  31. ?

  32. Which figure is the odd one out?

  33. TaK – Natural Sciences According to Karl Popper, science should be based on the method of conjecture and refutations, and scientists should try to falsify hypotheses rather than verify them

  34. Sir Cyril Burt 1883-1971 Educational Psychologist Worked on the Heritability of IQ Nature vs Nurture (see Sir Francis Galton) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toI_uohXNRw From 2.30 - 6.10

  35. TaK – Natural Sciences Scientific Progress…. or/and New explanations replace old through falsifying? New explanations coexist with old? Which? Why?

  36. TaK – Natural Sciences Smooth progress Knowledge Time

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