Science and an accumulation of facts -TOK essay

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Vaishali Harirajan

“Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks: but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house” (Henri Poincaré). Discuss in relation to science and at least one other area of knowledge.

Science is an “intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment”- The world of science and technology.  The system explains natural phenomena by scientific observation and experimentation. Scientists use educated guesses, a hypothesis, to pave their way for an experiment. Experiments are designed to prove or disapprove the hypothesis and once their hypothesis is verified and true about certain aspects of the natural world, it is termed as a scientific theory with the condition that any hypothesis must be refutable.

Theories of science help us comprehend the characteristics and processes of nature’s events. Karl Popper believed that scientific theories need to be falsified in order to qualify as ‘scientific theories’. This means that for any hypothesis to be true, it must be disprovable in at least one way. If it is disapproved, a new scientific theory is formed. Max Planck said, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Hence, one theory is formed from another and in this way new ideas are replaced by old ones.  However, the limitation of Popper’s belief is that, it doesn’t take into account that many theories of science are simply observational.

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According to the Kuhns theory, ideas exist in specific paradigms; once new ideas are proposed and the old have been disapproved, there is a paradigm shift. This happens over a period of time when scientists oppose to the old idea and promote the new idea. There is a change in people’s thinking and beliefs as a new scientific theory emerges. We can only shifts paradigms when there is another paradigm we can shift to. For example,I always thought the earth was flat when I was young until I questioned my parents about the truth of my thoughts. My thinking process ...

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