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ToK - Science

Some key points: The success of the natural sciences has led some people to see them as the most important form of knowledge The main difference between science and pseudo-science is that scientific hypotheses can be tested and pseudo-scientific ones cannot

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ToK - Science

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  1. Some key points: • The success of the natural sciences has led some people to see them as the most important form of knowledge • The main difference between science and pseudo-science is that scientific hypotheses can be tested and pseudo-scientific ones cannot • According to the traditional picture of the scientific method, science consists of five key steps: observation, hypothesis, experiment, law and theory • Among the problems that arise in applying the scientific method are that observation is selective, and that you are more likely to notice things that confirm your hypothesis than those that contradict it • Since scientific laws are based on a limited number of observations, we can never be sure that they are true ToK - Science

  2. Some key points: • According to Karl Popper, science should be based on the method of conjectures and refutations, and scientists should try to falsify hypotheses rather than verify them • Thomas Kuhn drew attention to the role played by paradigms in science and argued that the history of science is punctuated by revolutionary jumps or ‘paradigm shifts’ • Although scientific beliefs change over time, it could be argued that each new theory is closer to the truth than the previous one • Despite the success of the natural sciences, they cannot give us absolute certainty and there are many perplexing questions that lie beyond their scope ToK - Science

  3. ToK - Science Perception How far do expectations influence observations? Maths Is the book of nature written in the language of mathematics? Language What role do metaphors play in science? Religion How similar is ‘faith in the order of the universe’ to religious faith? Human Sciences How do the Human sciences differ from the natural sciences? Natural Sciences Ethics What are the moral responsibilities of scientists? History Should scientists know about the history of their subjects? Arts What role does imagination play in the sciences?

  4. ToK - Science “Science is a way of thinking more than it is a body of knowledge” Carl Sagan “Science is the only genuine permanent revolution in human affairs , since it is committed to challenging the findings of its forebears” Daniel Bell

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