Science is a structure built on facts. (J.J.DAVIES)Discuss the account of science. To what extent is it a supportable proposition?

Authors Avatar

Science is a structure built on facts. (J.J.DAVIES)

Discuss the account of science. To what extent is it a supportable proposition?

Science is an accurate method where experiments are performed and facts are observed. It’s used to seek objective knowledge and understanding of the world.

These facts that science is based on are supposed to be claims about the world that can be directly established by a careful, unprejudiced use of the senses.

        

        Science has to be objective and thus it’s based on what we can hear, see, touch rather than on personal opinions. If the observations made by science about the world are carried out in a careful, unprejudiced way then the facts established in this approach will compose a solid and secure foundation for science.

Empiricists claimed that scientific knowledge should in some way be derived from the facts arrived at by sense experience.

        Science is based on inductive reasoning, this is making a number of observations of some aspect of the world and all these observations seem to tell us the same thing. On the basis of this, we assume that every other example of this aspect of the world, including all those that we have not yet observed, is going to tell us the same.

For example: many years ago every swan observed by an individual in New Zealand was white. Everyone believed that swans were only white and why not? All they ever came across was white swans for a number of years and so this observation was clearly made a fact for them until one day someone came across a black swan, which made the fact that all swans are white, false.

The flaw for induction is obvious here, some swans are not white, and the person simply had not seen any black swans.  An inductive conclusion is never 100% certain-only probable. The main flaw is that the past does not guarantee the same thing happening in the future. So science runs into some difficulties with this. Even so induction has never failed in the past because at that present time there was no more knowledge. Nevertheless it can be criticised that only because induction itself has worked in the past doesn’t mean is going to work in the future.

Join now!

        All the same in every day life we all use induction. For example when we turn on the T.V. we expect a picture to appear or when the kettle whistles we assume the water is boiling. This process of making assumptions based on experience seems to be an essential aspect of human life. However, the problem with this is whether it is the correct and appropriate method of conducting science.

        

Inductive reasoning shouldn’t mean that we jump to conclusions on the basis of only a few observations or experiences. Instead that it proceeds from careful, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay