On the two types of observation as found in The Art of Scientific Investigation :. Claude Bernard distinguished two types of observation: a spontaneous or passive observations which are unexpected; and b induced or active observations which are deliberately sought, usually on account of an hypothesis.
The thing noticed will only become significant if the mind of the observer either consciously or unconsciously relates it to some relevant knowledge or past experience, or if in pondering on it subsequently he arrives at some hypothesis. In the last section attention was called to the fact that the mind is particularly sensitive to changes or differences.
This is of use in scientific observation, but what is more important and more difficult is to observe in this instance mainly a mental process resemblances or correlations between things that on the surface appeared quite unrelated. The role of the observer is to discriminate. One cannot observe everything closely, therefore one must discriminate and try to select the significant. To develop the powers of observation you need to watch with an active mind as found in The Art of Scientific Investigation :.
Powers of observation can be developed by cultivating the habit of watching things with an active, enquiring mind. View all posts. Habits of Big Thinkers. Add comment. You may also like. Entrepreneurship Systems Thinking.
The Iceberg Model for Problem-Solving 17, views. Why is Systems Thinking Important to Innovation? Subscribe Join our community of bigThinkers! Email address:. Instead of claiming that confirming evidence justifies belief or boosted confidence that a theory is true, one is restricted to saying that the theory continues to be consistent with the evidence as far as we can tell so far. However, if the epistemic utility of empirical results in appraising the status of theories is just to judge their empirical adequacy, then it may be difficult to account for the difference between adequate but unrealistic theories, and those equally adequate theories that ought to be taken seriously as representations.
Appealing to extra-empirical virtues like parsimony may be a way out, but one that will not appeal to philosophers skeptical of the connection thereby supposed between such virtues and representational fidelity. On an earlier way of thinking, observation was to serve as the unmediated foundation of science—direct access to the facts upon which the edifice of scientific knowledge could be built. When conflict arose between factions with different ideological commitments, observations could furnish the material for neutral arbitration and settle the matter objectively, in virtue of being independent of non-empirical commitments.
According to this view, scientists working in different paradigms could at least appeal to the same observations, and propagandists could be held accountable to the publicly accessible content of theory and value-free observations. Despite their different theories, Priestley and Lavoisier could find shared ground in the observations. Anti-Semites would be compelled to admit the success of a theory authored by a Jewish physicist, in virtue of the unassailable facts revealed by observation.
The strict contrast between theory and observation in science is more fruitfully supplanted by inquiry into the relationship between theorizing and empirical results. Contemporary philosophers of science tend to embrace the theory ladenness of empirical results. Instead of seeing the integration of the theoretical and the empirical as an impediment to furthering scientific knowledge, they see it as necessary. That is, it is impossible to put empirical results to use without recruiting some theoretical resources.
In order to use an empirical result to constrain or test a theory it has to be processed into a form that can be compared to that theory. To get stellar spectrograms to bear on Newtonian or relativistic cosmology, they need to be processed—into galactic rotation curves, say. The spectrograms by themselves are just artifacts, pieces of paper. Scientists need theoretical resources in order to even identify that such artifacts bear information relevant for their purposes, and certainly to put them to any epistemic use in assessing theories.
This outlook does not render contemporary philosophers of science all constructivists, however. Theory mediates the connection between the target of inquiry and the scientific worldview, it does not sever it. Theory can be deployed in experiment design, data processing, and presentation of results in unproductive ways, for instance, in determining whether the results will speak for or against a particular theory regardless of what the world is like.
Critical appraisal of the roles of theory is thus important for genuine learning about nature through science. Indeed, it seems that extra-empirical values can sometimes assist such critical appraisal. Instead of viewing observation as the theory-free and for that reason furnishing the content with which to appraise theories, we might attend to the choices and mistakes that can be made in collecting and generating empirical results with the help of theoretical resources, and endeavor to make choices conducive to learning and correct mistakes as we discover them.
Recognizing the involvement of theory and values in the constitution and generation of empirical results does not undermine the special epistemic value of empirical science in contrast to propaganda and pseudoscience.
In cases where the influence of cultural, political, and religious values hinder scientific inquiry, it is often the case that they do so by limiting or determining the nature of the empirical results. Yet, by working to make the assumptions that shape results explicit we can examine their suitability for our purposes and attempt to restructure inquiry as necessary.
When disagreements arise, scientists can attempt to settle them by appealing to the causal connections between the research target and the empirical data.
The tribunal of experience speaks through empirical results, but it only does so through via careful fashioning with theoretical resources. Introduction 2. Observation and data 2. Theory and value ladenness 3.
The epistemic value of empirical evidence 4. Introduction Philosophers of science have traditionally recognized a special role for observations in the epistemology of science. Hempel , This view is motivated by the assumption that the epistemic value of an observation report depends upon its truth or accuracy, and that with regard to perception, the only thing observers can know with certainty to be true or accurate is how things appear to them.
Theory and value ladenness Empirical results are laden with values and theoretical commitments. His experiment was such that he might well have obtained results showing that the charge of the electron was not quantized or that there was no single stable value for this quantity.
We need to ensure that value judgements do not operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. This is our fundamental criterion for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate uses of values in science.
The epistemic value of empirical evidence One of the important applications of empirical evidence is its use in assessing the epistemic status of scientific theories. For Duhem a physical theory … is a system of mathematical propositions, deduced from a small number of principles, which aim to represent as simply and completely, and exactly as possible, a set of experimental laws. Conclusion On an earlier way of thinking, observation was to serve as the unmediated foundation of science—direct access to the facts upon which the edifice of scientific knowledge could be built.
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Transcript of Katzmiller v. Dover Area School District on the teaching of intelligent design. Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Mirror Sites View this site from another server:.
The relative age, the reoccurring names, the stone wall encasing the particular graveyard, the size, the location, the soil type and samples, the decorations and engravings on the tombstones, are all pieces of a puzzle that archaeologists attempt to readjust and re-piece to map the history of their origins.
In class, we approached these tombstones in different ways, Feminist and Marxist approaches to the graveyard data that the practical team gathered last week. The small size of the graveyard, as well as the walled stone surroundings shows that the graveyard was a reserved space for the small community. Observation is key and finding general patterns are important, and with general trends, we can perhaps guess about many things.
But it is important to acknowledge the fact that archaeology lies in between the scientifically quantitative and the historically qualitative evidence. And at times, the evidence that is translated may be biased and not necessarily the truth, however, that itself will become part of the history and the motives behind the bias.
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