Adam+week+1

In his article "Dispelling Some Common Myths About Science" Dr. Terry Hawles states that science is not the higher level of thinking we often perceive it as, but rather the same ordinary thought process which we use every day. He also states that the hypothetico-deductive method is invalid and is in fact not used by scientists. I both agree and disagree with his findings, he states that, "What is required for scientific progress is mainly ordinary curiosity, ordinary reasoning, and fairly ordinary communication." This is certainly true, but it is a long shot from saying that the scientific method is invalid. Rather what is more accurate is that so called "scientific method" is a completely valid manner of reasoning, which is no different from typical human reasoning in any environment. In any situation we always reason by observing what is occurring, forming a belief about why it is occurring, and then finding evidence to support our hypothesis. Dr. Hawles' two arguments conflict, stating that scientists do not reason with any method beyond normal comprehension does not mean the scientific method is a myth, it merely means that the scientific method is built upon normal human thinking. He makes examples such a the fact that scientists often use trial and error, and for this reason the scientific method is invalid. However, trial and error is a clear use of the scientific method, not a departure from it. In trial and error, one forms a hypothesis of several possible solutions to a problem and then tests them all until one which adequetely explains the events is found. Dr. Hawles is correct when he says that scientists are not using some all powerful method of reasoning, but this does not mean that scientific method is invalid, instead it means that normal reasoning is not at all different from the hypothetico-deductive method. In another article "The Terrible Truth about Truth" Dr. Hawles investigates human perceptions of the sciences and corrects what he considers to be a misinterpretation of what science is. He argues that the scientific method is not superior to common thinking and that scientific knowledge is not a superior fom of knowledge. He points out that people in very non-scientific positions often use similar reasoning to reach logical conclusions, and most importantly, he points the numerous revisions and corrections that have been made to scientific "facts" throughout the centuries. He also discusses the "certainly paradox" which occurs when facts obtained by the supposedly infallible scientific method are proven incorrect, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the scientific method is not perfect. Dr. Hawles' most serious object to the scientific method of obtaining "facts" is that the observations required for careful deduction are often subjective to the humans who observe them, such as Newton's laws appearing to be absolutely true, except when we learn that they do not apply at extremely high speeds or energy levels. I take issue with Dr. Hawles' comment, "Thinking about the goal of scientific work as perfect knowledge, whether as something we actually attain or as something we approach, distorts our understanding of the process." Science most certainly is and always will be flawed, many incorrect and flawed pieces of information have been considered to be scientific facts in the past, and no doubt our current understanding of many natural phenomena is incorrect, but that does not mean that there is no truth out there. There are absolutes in science, things which we can establish beyond any reasonable doubt. People once believed the world was round, as Dr. Hawles often points out, but we now know with absolute certainty that the earth is an oblique sphere. We know this because we have observed and measured it from orbit, the Earth has a major and minor axis which can be measured exactly using laser technology, this a concrete fact. Clearly we are infinitely far from ever having a perfect understanding of a all reality in the universe, but such an understanding does //exist.// Dr. Hawles also states, "[I]n science if we were actually approaching truth--the rate of new discoveries and improvements would be decreasing, not increasing." His logic here is flawed because this is not how the scientific community functions. It is not so simple as observing the entire universe and then systematically solving every mystery one step at a time. Pieces of knowledge are discovered by many different people at different times, and slowly they fall into place. Inevitably, the more we learn, the more new questions it will pose, and as such learning more can actually set us back in the whole scheme of understanding the big picture. In essence, the more we learn, the less we know, but it does not mean we are still moving forward in our learnings. Total understanding does exist, we will never reach it, but it is a real thing that we move closer to.