Monday, November 11, 2019
What Is It About Theories in the Human Sciences and Natural Sciences That Makes Them Convincing
When I was very young, my science teacher taught me Charles Darwinââ¬â¢s evolution theory, and I never doubted that theory since Darwin is a well-known scientist and the authority in the field of biology. Until one day, I became a Christian; I need to accept another theory which is that human beings are created by God. My knowledge had a crash. I have never seen neither earlier species develop to human beings nor God creates human beings by using mud. That is when I started to question the knowledge that I have acquired from all the areas of knowledge. Why I am convinced by the theories?What do I or should I really believe? When I was first introduced to Newtonââ¬â¢s third law of motions which is the mutual force of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear; I doubted it for a very long time. Since every time when I play roller skate and hit to a wall, I am the one who falls and got hurt, then how can I believe the wall got the same mutual force f rom me as well? However, one day, my teacher brought two same sized basketballs to the class. He put both of them on the floor and called two students to push the balls.When the basketballs collided with each other; both of them started to move backward. That is how my teacher proved Newtonââ¬â¢s third law of motion and thatââ¬â¢s when I started to believe. My sight as one of the sense perception witnessed someone prove the law and based on the past experiences, my sense perception rarely lies to me ergo I accepted something that I did not believe in natural science because of my faith in the sense perception. Also, as an IB natural science student, I knew that there is a very strict systematic methodology (observation, hypothesis, experiment, law, and theory) in natural science.If some scientist wants to find a theory form his or her observation then he or she needs to follow the methodology precisely so that other scientist could use the same method to recreate the experimen t and to prove the theory. In other words, natural science is universal; the theory will not change because of culture, gender or age etc. just like playing piano, as long as one gets the piano sheets, the melody that he or she plays will be the same with others who are at the different age or have different cultural background.However, oneââ¬â¢s emotion could effects the accuracy of the natural sciences sometimes. The natural scientists therefore are required to do the experiment over and over again also they try to control all the possible variables in order to avoid the result affected by the emotion. For me, I can prove theories in natural sciences by using the same method as the scientist did. No matter how many times I do the experiment. The result does not change. The strict and universally accept methodology makes me have a very strong faith in theories in natural sciences.Even though we can use different methods to justify most of the natural science theories, some of th e theories are so abstract that even some of the scientists cannot understand them. When facing those theories that I am not smart enough to question or to challenge, I am not a natural science student anymore, I became like an uneducated child, but I am still convinced by those abstruse theories. This is not blind faith, I used reasoning as a way of knowing to decide whether the knowledge is convincing.When I read ââ¬Å"the Brief History of Timeâ⬠by Steven Hawking I did not understand any theories mentioned in the book, but I still believe it. This is because that since a lot of Hawkingââ¬â¢s theories had been commonly accepted, I believe that he is an authority in the field of physics and many other scientists are convinced by Hawking too. As he has been right for a long time ergo I assumed there is enough reason to believe he is right for this time as well. Since there are not many potions and are not many theories that I known of are competing with Hawkingââ¬â¢s.I a m sometimes convinced by one natural science theory simply because that the scientist who came up with the theory is the authority and there are not any other theories to believe. If natural sciences are the studies of non-living objects then in my opinion human sciences studies the most vigorous objects, the minds of human beings. As I mentioned earlier, natural science is like playing piano, as long as people follow the symbol written on the piano sheets, they will get the same melody. In contrary, human beings
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