Science: A Way of Knowing & Providing Order to the Universe

Methods of Science Explanation in Science Science and Pseudoscience The Ordered Universe – Geocentric Universe – Heliocentric Universe – Newton’s Laws and the Founding of Modern Science

Major Methods of Science Observation: descriptions of natural phenomena usually in the search for patterns in nature Experiment: manipulation of nature to examine a phenomenon

Deductive Method Most typical for natural philosophers following the rediscovery of Aristotle by western Europe Explanatory method of Plato and Pythagoras Clearly expounded by René Descartes in 1637 [Discours de la méthode (Discourse on the Method)]. René Descartes

Inductive or Empirical Method Based on observation The experimental method is a subset of the inductive method Francis Bacon proposed the Great Instauration Novum Organum (1620) Francis Bacon

Human reason can be decieved in the following ways: Idylls of the Tribe (incorrect inference of cause and effect) Idylls of the Den (one’s views are influenced by others and may be upheld by ignoring contravening evidence) Idylls of the Marketplace (false arguments can be convincing due to ambiguity of communication) Idylls of the Theater (theories about the world can be false)

William Gilbert Contemporary of Bacon Did not recognize Bacon as a natural philosopher Bacon critical of Gilbert’s explanations – The Alchemists have made a philosophy out of a few experiments of the furnace and Gilbert our countryman hath made a philosophy out of observations of the lodestone. – [Gilbert] has himself become a magnet; that is, he has ascribed too many things to that force and built a ship out of a shell. William Gilbert

Explanation Hypothesis Theory Principle Law

Attributes of Pseudoscience Anything is possible (cannot be falsified) Vague, exaggerated, untested claims Refutation of alternative theory, but no material confirmation of the claim

biology - geology chemistry physics mathematics COMPLEXITY

The Ordered Universe

Construction of Stonehenge Earthen banks (~3100 BCE) Wooden Building (~3000 BCE) Bluestones (~2600 BCE) Sarsen Stones ( BCE) Final arrangement ( BCE)

Aristotle of Stagira BCE Eudoxus of Cnidus BCE Claudius Ptolemy ~ CE

Nicolaus Copernicus

Giordano Bruno Dominican and non-trinitarian Praised Copernican system On trial and burned at the stake for heresy of Arianism ( )

Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler

Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion Law of Ellipses Equal Area Law (Period) 2 /(Major Axis) 3 is the same for all planets.

Galileo Galilei Direct observations of the heavens with his improved telescope Saw blemishes on the moon and (later) on the sun Recorded the Medician stars and explained their changing positions as moons circling Jupiter

Isaac Newton Law of Gravity: the strength of the gravitational force between two bodies of mass is relative to the inverse square of the distance between their centers of mass. Used this concept of gravity to explain Kepler’s Laws of motion

Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley, John Flamsteed Robert Hooke Edmond Halley John Flamsteed

Newton’s Laws of Motion

Conservation of momentum (P=mv) ƩP=0