knowledge, science, and the universe chapter 1 - Physical Science ...

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gant ideas have changed the way people look at the world and have shaped our expectations of the future. Hopefully these ideas will affect and shape your thinking in the same way. A strength of science is its ability to prove ideas “right” or “wrong” by whether or not their predictions match our experience. In this way it leads mankind along a path to truth. Even so, actually knowing what is true is not as straightforward as one might think. So first let us consider how we know what we know. L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S When you finish this chapter you should be able to • Identify and describe the four ways we learn. • Discuss the scientific method and how it generates knowledge. • Describe six basic assumptions the scientific method rests upon. • Identify the four interactions of nature and the scope of their influence. 1–1 ShAREd SOuRCES Of kNOwLEdGE We often assume that we know something without realizing how we build our knowledge from the information presented to us. Information comes to us as signals to our brains from our eyes, ears, hands, etc., while other information comes in less physical ways. Although we all live in the same world, each of us weighs the value and validity of the information we receive differently. This creates a view of the real world that is unique to each of us. In essence, every person is a philosopher, creating his or her own view of the world from shared sources of knowledge. These “shared sources of knowledge” are authority, intuition, reason, and sensory data. Authority Learning through authority means trusting the 3 3
4 C h A p T E R 1 Knowledge, Science, and the Universe Intuition Authority An accepted source of expert information or advice. Intuition The act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes; it involves immediate cognition. Reason The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought—intelligence. figure 1.1 Much of our learning comes from following authority. knowledge possessed by another person or some other source and accepting it as true, even though you yourself have not had the experiences through which your accepted authority gained his or her knowledge. The authority could be a parent, scholar, historian, reporter, leader, scripture, or any of a number of other sources. In cases of conflicting claims of knowledge between competing authorities, we often give precedence to those that come to us from antiquity and thus have been tested by time, or to those that are held to be true by the greatest number and so have been validated by the most witnesses. Perhaps we might give greater weight to knowledge from a prestigious source, someone with a special perspective, such as an astronomer telling us about the stars. Much, possibly the majority, of our knowledge comes from authority because our own sphere of experience is so limited compared to the world at large. The strength of this source of knowledge is that it allows us to accept and learn from the experience of others, so that we do not have to experience all things ourselves. Its weakness is that sources of authority may conflict with each other, and we cannot resolve competing claims of truth without reference to one of the other sources. How do we know which sources of authority to trust We define intuition as knowledge imparted to us through methods outside of our five physical senses. Inspiration and revelation are in this category, as are “hunches” or “feelings” or a “belief” that something is correct or true. Because intuitive experiences often come after contemplating questions relating to the meaning and purpose of life, intuition is often regarded as religious knowledge. However, the scientific process benefits from intuition as well. Albert Einstein and other great scientists have freely acknowledged that intuitive thinking was the genesis of many of their ideas. Einstein unashamedly confessed that intuition guided his scientific judgment. The inner experiences of intuition may be impossible to articulate or quantify scientifically, but nonetheless, they are deeply felt, convincing, and direct. Individuals who experience this source of knowledge often alter their lives and perform deeds that the other sources of knowledge seldom inspire. Intuition’s greatest strength is that it may be knowledge from the giver of life who knows all things. But although several individuals may experience similar intuitive events, each will have an individual interpretation that may be difficult to describe to someone else. It is this privateness, this inaccessibility to public scrutiny, that is the weakness of intuitive knowledge. How do we know if our intuition is right or if our interpretation of it is correct figure 1.2 Intuitive learning is direct and pure but personal. Great moments of learning often come with an intuitive “flash of insight.”
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