Preview

Tok Essay Disagreement Leads to Improvement in Science

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
716 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Tok Essay Disagreement Leads to Improvement in Science
TOK essay Yoonhee, Ki Word Count: 688
“Doubt is the key to knowledge”. To what extent is this true in the area of knowledge “The natural sciences”?

Natural science is one of the most remarkable achievements that mankind could have achieved because it gives us chance to step forward toward mysteries of the world, secrets of living organisms; furthermore it improves our quality of lives by offering convenient materials that our ancestors had never dreamed of. These achievements of natural science made people to consider it as the most certain subject next to or as equal as mathematics. However science has not only strengths but also several limitations. So to what extent should we believe science and to what extent should we uncertainty the knowledge extracted from the natural science?

According to the theory of scientism, “Science is the only way we can make sense of reality and discover the truth”. This statement demonstrates that as science has unreasonable power and influence on humans, we don’t need to doubt the absoluteness and certainty of it. Even one prominent philosopher Rudolf Carnap commented that science is capable of finding all the answers to all the questions. The reason that such statements and views exist is because without suspicion the natural science accomplished the most remarkable successes. Furthermore, it’s been in charge of the significant development of knowledge throughout the history and until now. For example, several scientists discovered the mysteries of our body such as how digestion occurs, how blood flows in the heart and functions and structures of organs by dissecting the real human bodies and analyzing through information obtained from equipments. As it is already proved by several methods and works in practical world such as medical science, we admit the natural science as truth and there is no place for doubt to stand. If we start to doubt all these knowledge, it will not conduce to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Imagine life as we know it without science. This may be hard to do, considering that scientific technology is now a perpetual symbol of modern-day life. Everything we see, everything we touch, and everything we ingest—all conceived of scientific research. But how did it come to be this way? Was it not only centuries ago that science began to surpass the authority of the church? Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, natural philosophers, now known as scientists, founded a new world view on science, which was previously based on the Bible and classic philosophers like Aristotle and Ptolemy. Both people connected their natural studies directly to God and the Bible, creating ideas like a geocentric earth. With time and new ideas, scientists managed to develope methods for creating and discovering things in nature, and with enough resources and patronage, were able to answer asked and unasked questions. Science, however, was not supported by everyone, and had to face many challenges to achieve the power it maintains in today’s world. Due to the strong authority that politics, religion, and common social order controlled in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, science was subjectively held in the hands of those who could utilize it or reject it.…

    • 1531 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ap World History Dbq

    • 1209 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Science has made many leaps forward throughout the centuries, bringing the world advancements it has never imagined. People may argue the negatives and positives of science these days and centuries ago it was no different. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the works and findings of scientists were greatly influenced by the approval of political figures due to their desire for power and monetary gain, the support and understanding received by influential religious personages and the downfalls of society regarding disorganization of research and a preset view of gender roles.…

    • 1209 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Science is normally linked with advancement, making life easier, providing ways to eliminate problems and more discoveries, possibilities of science are neverending…

    • 383 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Exam 1 Study Guide

    • 2446 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Science as a way of knowing provides for objective means to build a body of knowledge…

    • 2446 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Skepticism is essential to the pursuit of the scientific method. However, a balanced use of it is also necessary. Too much skepticism would make it very difficult for a scientist to arrive at a conclusion. Too little skepticism and said scientist would agree too readily with a proposed conclusion. Charles Lewontin, in his book The Doctrine of DNA: Biology as Ideology, lays out a case for why it is reasonable to be skeptical of science.…

    • 1365 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Jane Jacobs essay “A Scientific State of Mind,” Jacobs theorizes on the 4 stages to the scientific state of mind. Before a scientific fact can be conformed as true, it must first fallow the four stages which help solidify its backing therefor eliminating questions whether the outcome is politically or financed orientated. Jacobs essay starts by talking about the positive impact which science has played in our lives, both physically and mentally by showing how it has helped us to understand the need to take care of where we live and our surroundings. Though some people question science for personal reasons, Jacobs explains that science can be used to make things in our everyday lives more interesting and understandable answering questions…

    • 403 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Babbie's Sacrifice

    • 1783 Words
    • 8 Pages

    “Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon [the] discovery of better evidence.” – James Randi (1987)…

    • 1783 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Scientific Method

    • 889 Words
    • 4 Pages

    2. The nature of scientific knowledge gives the basic understanding of the nature of science that is occurring in the world and the reasons for its reliability.…

    • 889 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Physics C-100

    • 1941 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Science is a body of knowledge that is ever changing. It is made up of not only facts but also theories that are made up of well-tested hypotheses.…

    • 1941 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The scientific method consists of five steps: first, observing and recollecting information. Second, creating or formulating a hypothesis. Thirdly, scientists experiment, with the information and the observations they have made so as to reach to a conclusion, which is the fourth step. Finally, the last step consists in the communication, which is when you tell society about a new discovery or theory and the verification of this conclusion, in order to see if it is valid or not. Along this method there are lots of perceptions which are made, such as sense perception or induction, which may limit this method. What I will try to analyze along this essay is if the scientific method allows us or not to uncover truth. In order to do so, I will analyze whether the scientific method gives us absolute or provisional truth and how it gives us that truth.…

    • 1161 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Science contributes moral as well as material blessings to the world. Its great moral contribution is objective, or the scientific point of view. The means doubting everything except facts; it means hewing to the facts, lets the chips fall where they may.” (163)…

    • 506 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Almost all people believed that science could prove almost everything, as science does not appear from nowhere in one day. Science started out as an observation, which then became a hypothesis, leading to experiments, repeated experiments, the results of which are eventually submitted for peer review. When the results passed peer review and get published, scientists will then analyze the data for years again to look for inconsistencies, Once, the hypothesis survive the test, they become a scientific theory. For example, people who can see the supernatural, like ghosts, believed that ghosts existed and that means God existed and other different kinds of supernatural. To prove itself, the explanation from scientists about the existence of the ghosts is that the scientists had stimulated the left side of the junction, the part of the brain that defines the idea of self. By interfering with the area that helps us tell the difference between others and ourselves the doctors…

    • 933 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Disagreements in Science

    • 1626 Words
    • 7 Pages

    What are disagreements? Often an image of an argument between friends or spouses is associated with this word. However, this is very stereotypical because the word can have many interpretations. Disagreements occur in forms other than between individuals. For example, the argument between religion and atheism is a disagreement between two schools of thoughts, and the conflict between the scientist and the public on global warming is a disagreement between two communities of people. These disagreements sometimes narrow our perspective on the issue at hand. It prevents us to see the world with an open-mind to try and work through the conflict. Although this is true, can disagreements aid the pursuit of knowledge? To what extend does disagreements in natural and human sciences aid the pursuit of knowledge?…

    • 1626 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Naturalism Research Paper

    • 4440 Words
    • 18 Pages

    You now have hypothetical knowledge, but that is not good enough, because you are still skeptical of the results. So you test your hypotheses, and when corroborated, you now possess reliable knowledge, which is as close as humans can get to the truth in a natural world, but it is close enough. Later in this paper, I will demonstrate that naturalism is a methodological necessity in the practice of science by scientists, and an ontological necessity for understanding and justifying science by scientists. But I can discuss the general justification for the essentiality of naturalism in science now. The alternative to naturalism is supernaturalism, and unless naturalism is true and supernaturalism false, empiricism--comprehending reality solely by sensory experience--is not sufficient to comprehend reality; rationalism--the use of logic in reasoning--is not sufficient to understand reality; and skepticism--the questioning and evaluation of one's knowledge system and beliefs--is not sufficient to arrive at reliable knowledge of reality. Simply put, empiricism, rationalism, and skepticism--the foundations of science--will not be epistemologically reliable unless naturalism is either true or assumed to be true, since by not doing so, part of reality…

    • 4440 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The natural sciences are an area of knowledge which have significantly impacted our perception of the natural world. The natural sciences denote subjects such as physics, biology and chemistry. From my perspective, the natural sciences are an area of knowledge independent of culture. In order to reach this conclusion, I examined the scientific method. The scientific method is a method used to distinguish a science from a pseudo science ( fake science). According to the traditional picture of the scientific method, science is divided into 5 steps known as inductivism.…

    • 1296 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays