Phys 020

Darwinism and End of Science PHYS 020

- Scientific reasoning has the solid and rigid feel of logic, but not the purity of logic: it is, as a result much more useful.

- Science cannot be done by mere computers: developing scientific knowledge requires skills that computers cannot have. Reasoning is an art, and reasoning about the natural world is the art that lies at the base of science

- So to say that scientific reasoning is a learned skilled is just to say once again that science is an art. It takes experiences and a practical understanding of important concepts and distinctions. It is an art because a machine could not do it nearly as well as an experienced person can. And it is an art because at least so far in the history of science, there are few last words: the development of reasoning around a topic rarely comes to an end. The major difference between reasoning and logic is, most people agree about what logic is, when while they may disagree about what is reasonable. Not to say that scientists are illogical or irrational, but logic doesn’t carry them very far. Logic, while bery pretty is by itself quite useless. The difficult work of scientific reasoning isn’t that of figuring out what is logical, but of figuring out what makes sense. Logic is self-evident, while in reasoning it is never easy to know when and how to apply theories.

Darwinism/Natural Selection:

- Origin of species: brilliant idea to account for diversity and complexity of living organism, and their adaptation to their environments – natural selection.

- Natural selection: Many more organisms are born than survive to have offspring. Those that manage to reproduce will pass their characteristics on to future generations, since offspring generally resemble parents. Therefore characteristics that help organisms survive and reproduce will tend to become more common, at the expense of those that do not. Over thousands and millions of generations one could expect to see large...