Fall 2013
Study Guide Exam I
Exam 1 is scheduled for Monday October 28, 2013 at 9:00am and will cover chapters 1, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 49, lecture material, films and handouts.
Please bring a red Scantron form: F-288-Par-L
From the lectures, please know the following:
What is the purpose of the Social Science 1A course?
What is the definition of social science?
What are the various social sciences?
What are the different ways of obtaining knowledge and answering questions?
We viewed a short film on the Columbia Accident Investigation.
We will have one or two questions regarding the actions of the NASA that hindered the accident investigation.
Who is Francis Bacon?
What are Bacon’s doctrines of empiricism and induction?
How does induction work as a means to discover empirical laws?
Why did Bacon criticize the use of hypotheses in science?
What did Bacon mean by “knowledge is power?”
What is the practical purpose of the social sciences for Bacon?
Know the meaning of the four Idols of the Mind that interfere with the search for correct knowledge according to Bacon.
Why did Rene Descartes support the use of theory in science?
What analogy did Descartes use to indicate the importance of theory?
Auguste Comte is the originator of positivism for the social sciences. What is this doctrine?
According to Comte, societies pass through three stages of development. What are these stages?
What did Comte mean by the “religion of humanity”? Who should be the members of this religion? What did it cost Comte for promoting the religion of humanity?
Comte arranged the natural and social sciences into a hierarchy. What is this hierarchy?
What is the rationale for Comte’s hierarchy?
What analogy did Isaac Newton use to describe the world?
How have the natural sciences aided the development of the social sciences?
Today, is it possible to put the natural