Reflection On A Session Titled The Nature Of Science & Scientific Methods
As a first-year student, I was a bit nervous as even though I had already been introduced to the course, I was still overwhelmed at the idea of ‘Science, Medicine and Technology’ since it was a new area of study for me. This particular field was not my strong suit, hence I was worried that I would not be able to grasp the concepts being addressed in class. Thankfully, these feelings of uncertainty began to fade as the lecturer eased us into the second session, giving a brief recap of the key terms from the previous lecture. By discussing the nature of science and technology, I was able to distinguish between both concepts.
To my understanding, science encompasses fact-finding, accumulating interlocking theories, and understanding the natural world, while technology is application oriented and focuses on the use of science and its principles to develop and provide solutions for the man-made world. The topic of perception and the question of “is science objective?” was further explored. This part of the session was intriguing to me as various images were presented, such as the illusion of the young lady versus the old hag. Through discussing these various illusions, I was able to capture the message that each individual has his or her own perceptual set which influences how they view the world around them; a lesson that I hope to use in the future. Prior to this, I mistakenly believed that science was undoubtedly objective, but through this lesson, I was able to understand that objectivity is more of an ideal for scientific inquiry, as each researcher will have his or her own biases that can influence his research
To me, objectivity refers to impartiality, neutrality and a lack of bias, and by understanding this term, I was able to grasp the basic concept of induction, as this method depends on the objectivity in the analysis of empirical observations. Furthermore, a video entitled “Problem Solving: Inductive & Deductive Reasoning” was presented. This then helped to reiterate my knowledge on induction and deduction since I had already learnt about these methods as a high school student. Another interesting aspect of the session was when the lecturer drew upon an example from Karl Popper and his reference to the claim that all swans are white, which was falsifiable since it was contradicted when black swans were verifiably observed. This stood out to me as it highlighted a significant limitation of the inductive method; scientific falsifiability, which was proposed by Popper in his “Logic of Scientific Discovery”.
The concept of falsifiability was a bit confusing for me to understand, but after doing extra research, I believe that this term refers to the claim that for any scientific theory or hypothesis to be accepted, it must be inherently disprovable when tested. Moreover, I enjoyed this lecture as not only did it shed light on misconceptions I had about the objectivity of science and the idea of perception, but I also learnt new concepts like falsifiability. While I indeed built on my knowledge of scientific methods, I still intend to learn more about induction and deduction through readings entitled “Induction, Deduction and the Scientific Method” and “Deductive Reasoning vs Inductive Reasoning”, to ensure that I fully understand and appreciate these scientific methods.
