Week II. Reality Vs. Illusion

The basic value of science is that all ideas about reality are subject to both testing by experiment and challenge by critical rational thought.

Scientifically literate thinkers accept ideas tentatively based on evidence rather than authority.

Once we acquire a belief, we tend to adhere to the belief even when there is contradictory evidence.

Scientific method

If a result of observation or experiment matches the prediction of a hypothesis, this is interpreted as support for the validity of the hypothesis, not proof of its truth.

Science conducts tests of hypotheses that are designed to challenge (disprove) each hypothesis.  The credibility of the hypothesis increases as it withstands these challenges.  Each time the hypothesis does not withstand the challenge, the hypothesis must be revised or discarded.

Scientists evaluate hypotheses by: 1) seeking new instances predicted by the hypotheses and 2) by looking for pre-existing examples consistent with the hypotheses.

Scientific Observations

Perception is the meaning or interpretation of sensation and hence it is subject to bias.

Perceptual construction occurs when ambiguous sensory information is organized to reduce ambiguity.  Such construction can be affected by belief and expectancy.

Events or phenomena may seem real but may not be real.  Scientists must beware of personal experience when sensing events.  Therefore they need objective (replicable or repeatable by independent others) measurements rather than subjective measurements.  The evidence must be open to public scrutiny and corroboration by any suitably trained observer.

If more than one explanation is consistent with the observations, scientists select the simplest as most likely correct.

The more experimental support a hypothesis receives, the more probable it becomes.  However, no amount of empirical support can prove that a hypothesis is true.

A model is a representation or likeness of reality invented to account for objectively observed phenomena (e.g., The Democritus, the Thompson, The Rutherford, The Bohr. and the Quantum Mechanical Models of the “atomic” structure of reality).

Pseudoscience Sells.

Pseudoscience promises more immediate relief from diseases and that death is not the end of the individual.

A phenomenon that has not yet been explained is not necessarily supernatural.

Wishful thinking causes people to imagine events happening that do not really happen.  People who rely on personal anecdotes as evidence are in danger of deceiving themselves.  We tend to notice only positive events corresponding to a belief while ignoring the negative events.

Pseudoscientific hypotheses are formulated in a way that they cannot be challenged by empirical evidence.  These hypotheses and explanations are nonfalsifiable.  If no falsifiable condition can be imagined, then the explanation is not scientific.

Pseudoscience may derive from the notion that any belief held by so many people for so long a time must be valid.  Popularity and sincerity are not scientific evidence.