Interpretations of the scientific method - Interpretations of the scientific method There are many interpretations of the scientific method. In general terms it is the way scientists investigate the world and produce knowledge about it. Many use the term to refer to an idealized, systematic approach that is supposed to characterize all scientific investigation. It is distinguished from other routes to knowledge by its use of controlled experiments and its requirement that results be reproducible. Many scholars do not believe in the existence of such a method, however, or they do not believe that it accurately describes science. The actual methods of scientists, they argue, are less ideal and more haphazard. The question of how science operates is not only academic. In the judicial system and in policy debates, for example, a study's.
Hypothetico-deductive method - Hypothetico-deductive method Hypothetico-deductive method is a theory about scientific method. A hypothesis is devised from which can be deduced certain explicit, observable predictions. Observations which run contrary to those predicted are taken as evidence against the hypothesis, observations which are in agreement with those predicted are taken as corroborating the hypothesis. It is then supposedly possible to compare the explanatory value of competing hypotheses by looking to see how well they are sustained by their predictions. The hypothetico-deductive method derives primarily from the work of Karl Popper. What is to count as corroborating evidence is philosophically problematic. The raven paradox is a famous example. The observation 'all swans are white' would appear to be collaborated only by observations of white swans. However, 'all swans are white' is logically.
Empirical method - Empirical method Empirical methods are the means by which scientists gather information about the world in order to develop theories. These include experiment, disclosure for peer review, and other ways in which theories are assessed by scientists. The term quasi-empirical methods evolved to describe aspects of the scientific method which are not amenable to disproof by experiment. These are now widely recognized to constitute much of what is loosely called 'scientific consensus', as some theories are not amenable to direct experimental invalidation, or indeed controlled experiment. See also: hypothetico-deductive method..
Delphi method - Delphi method The Delphi method is a systematic interactive forecasting method based on independent inputs of selected experts. In 1944, General Arnold ordered the creation of the report for the U.S. Air Force on the future technological capabilities that might be used by the military. Two years later, Douglas Aircraft company started Project RAND to study "the broad subject of inter-continental warfare other than surface". Different approaches were tried, but the shortcomings of traditional forecasting methods, such as theoretical approach, quantitative models or trend extrapolation in areas where precise scientific laws have not been established yet, quickly became apparent. To combat these shortcomings, the Delphi method was developed in RAND Corporation during the 1950-1960s by Olaf Helmer and Norman Dalkey. The name "Delphi" obviously comes from the.
Baconian method - Baconian method The Baconian method is the investigative method developed by Francis Bacon. It is an early forerunner of the Scientific method. The English physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) was one of the earliest scientists to adhere to the scientific empiricism of the Baconian method. His encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-76) includes numerous examples of Baconian investigative methodology; its preface even paraphrases lines from Bacon's essay On Truth from his 1605 work The advancement of learning. The Baconian method was further developed and promoted by J. S. Mill. The method consists of procedures for isolating the cause of a phenomenon, including the method of agreement, method of difference, and method of concomitant variation. Thus, if an army is successful when commanded by Essex, and not successful when not.
Karl Lachmann - Academy of Sciences. The remainder of his laborious and fruitful life as an author and a teacher was uneventful. Lachmann, who was the translator of the first volume of PE Müller's Sagabibliothek des skandinavischen Altertums (1816), is a figure of considerable importance in the history of German philology (see Rudolf von Raumer, Geschichte der germanischen Philologie, 1870). In his "Habilitationsschrift" über die ursprungliche Gestalt des Gedichts von der Nibelungen Noth (1816), and still more in his review of Hagen's Nibelungen and Benecke's Bonerius, contributed in 1817 to the Jenaische Literaturzeitung he had already laid down the rules of textual criticism and elucidated the phonetic and metrical principle of Middle High German in a manner which marked a distinct advance in that branch of investigation. The rigidly scientific character of his method.
Knowledge - the past, such as Aristotle. Knowledge may also be based upon the pronouncements of secular or religious authority such as the state or the church. A second way to derive knowledge is by observation and experiment: the scientific method. Knowledge may also be derived by reason from either traditional, authoritative, or scientific sources or a combination of them and may or may not be verified by resort to observation and testing. Knowledge may be factual or inferential. Factual knowledge is based on direct observation. It is still not free of uncertainty, as errors of observation or interpretation may occur, and any sense can be deceived by illusions. Inferential knowledge is based on reasoning from facts or from other inferential knowledge such as a theory. Such knowledge may or may not be.
Knowledge (philosophy) - way of gaining knowledge has been by accepting the teachings of generally recognized authorities of the past. These could be philosophical, religious or scientific teachings. A second way to derive knowledge is by observation and experiment: the scientific method. (Knowledge gained by observation was ignored or rejected by many classical religious authorities.) Knowledge is also be derived by reason and logic, and by mathematics. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Defining knowledge 2 Inferential vs. factual knowledge 3 Ways to obtain knowledge 3.1 Practical limits for obtaining knowledge 3.2 The problem of justification 3.3 Externalist responses 3.4 Skepticism 4.
Korean Workers' Party - the congress, Kim Il Sung outlined a set of goals and policies for the 1980s. Kim Il Sung clarified a new ten-point policy for the unified state and stressed that North Korea and South Korea (the Republic of Korea, or ROK) should recognize and tolerate each other's ideas and social systems, that the unified central government should be represented by P'yongyang and Seoul on an equal footing, and that both sides should exercise regional autonomy with equal rights and duties. Specifically, the unified government should respect the social systems and the wishes of administrative organizations and of every party, every group, and every sector of people in the North and the South, and prevent one side from imposing its will on the other. Kim Il Sung also emphasized the Three Revolutions,.
Jane Goodall - tool use in chimpanzees. She discovered that some chimpanzees poke twigs into termite holes. The termites would grab onto the stick with their mandibles and the chimpanzees would then just pull the stick out and eat the termites. Goodall also flouted traditional scientific method in her study of primates by naming the animals she studied, instead of assigning each a number, a nearly universal practice at the time. One of cartoonist Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons shows two chimps grooming, one finding Jane Goodall's hair in the fur of the other. The Goodall institute complained that this was in bad taste; however an appeal to Jane Goodall herself revealed that she found the cartoon amusing; since then, all profits from sales of the t-shirt featuring this cartoon go to the.
Jacques Antoine Hippolyte, Comte de Guibert - scarcely foresaw. "The standing armies, while a burden on the people, are inadequate for the achievement of great and decisive results in war, and meanwhile the mass of the people, untrained in arms, degenerates. ... The hegemony over Europe will fall to that nation which ... becomes possessed of manly virtues and creates a national army"--a prediction fulfilled almost to the letter within twenty years of Guibert's death. In 1773 he visited Germany and was present at the Prussian regimental drills and army manceuvres; Frederick the Great, recognizing Guibert's ability, showed great favour to the young comte and freely discussed military questions with him. Guibert's Journal d'un voyage en Allemagne was published, with a memoir, by Toulongeon (Paris, 1803). His Defense du système de guerre moderne, a reply to his many.
Jean le Rond d'Alembert - mechanician, physicist and philosopher. He was also one of the editors of "L'Encyclopédie", an early French encyclopedia. D'Alembert's method for the wave equation is named after him. Childhood Born on November 16, 1717 in Paris, d'Alembert was the illegitimate child of the writer Claudine Guérin de Tencin and the chevalier Louis-Camus Destouches (and artillery officer). Destouches was abroad at the time of d'Alembert's birth, and a couple of days after birth his mother left him on the steps of the Saint-Jean-le-Rond de Paris church. According to custom he is named after the protecting saint of the church. d'Alembert is placed in the home for found children, but is quickly adopted by the wife of a glazier. Destouches secretly pays for the education of Jean le Rond because he does not want.
Jewish principles of faith - Mount Sinai. It was here that God revealed the Torah to Moses. The Jewish tradition holds that the laws therein are binding on all of Israel. Orthodox and Conservative Jews hold that the prophecy of Moses is held to be true; he is held to be the chief of all prophets, even of those who came before and after him. This belief was expressed by Maimonides, who wrote that "Moses was superior to all prophets, whether they preceded him or arose afterwards. Moses attained the highest possible human level. He perceived God to a degree surpassing every human that ever existed....God spoke to all other prophets through an intermediary. Moses alone did not need this; this is what the Torah means when God says "Mouth to mouth, I will speak to.
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier - of Fourier series. He was born at Auxerre in the Yonne département of France, the son of a tailor, and was educated by the Benedictines. The commissions in the scientific corps of the army were reserved for those of good birth, and being thus ineligible he accepted a military lectureship on mathematics. He took a prominent part in his own district in promoting the revolution, and was rewarded by an appointment in 1795 in the Normal school, and subsequently by a chair in the Polytechnic school. Fourier went with Napoleon on his Eastern expedition in 1798, and was made governor of Lower Egypt. Cut off from France by the English fleet, he organized the workshops on which the French army had to rely for their munitions of war. He also contributed.
Vitamin C - in desert areas. Through history the benefit of plant food for the survival of sieges and long sea voyages was recommended by enlightened authorities. In the seventeenth century Richard Woodall, a ship's surgeon to the East India Company, recommended the use of lemon juice as a preventive and cure in his book "Surgeon's Mate" The early eighteenth century Dutch writer, Johannes Bachstrom gave the firm opinion that "scurvy is solely owing to a total abstinence from fresh vegetable food, and greens; which is alone the primary cause of the disease." The first attempt to give scientific basis for the cause of scurvy was by a ship's surgeon in the British Royal Navy, James Lind, who at sea in May 1747 provided some crew members with lemon juice in addition to normal.
John Napier - relatively little known outside mathematical circles where he made what is undoubtedly an extremely important advance in the history of mathematics. Logarithms made calculations by hand much easier and thereby opened the way to many later scientific advances. His work, Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio, contained thirty-seven pages of explanatory matter and ninety pages of tables, which facilitated the furtherment of astronomy, dynamics and physics. Napier's powers of invention were not confined to logarithms. He published a small treatise on a simple way to perform multiplication, the Rabdologiae, introducing a calculating device which became known as Napier's 'Rods' or 'Bones'. In an appendix he explained another method of multiplication and division using metal plates, which is one of the earliest known attempts at a mechanical means of calculation. He is buried in.
John Hagelin - Director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management, and Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace. Hagelin has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in particle physics dealing with supersymmetry and grand unification theory. The motivation behind his research is to demonstrate that there are deep connections between particle physics and the Transcendental Meditation program and the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which are not generally accepted by the physics community. However, it is generally acknowledged that the means by which he is attempting to demonstrate this connection are within the norms of the scientific method and that he has a competent background in particle physics, and as a result Hagelin's work within particle physics is well respected.
John Dalton - through the retirement of his cousin, joint manager of the school with his elder brother Jonathan. About 1790 he seems to have thought of taking up law or medicine, but his projects met with no encouragement from his relatives and he remained at Kendal till, in the spring of 1793, he moved to Manchester. Mainly through John Gough, a blind philosopher to whose aid he owed much of his scientific knowledge, he was appointed teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy at the New College in Moseley Street (in 1880 transferred to Manchester College, Oxford), and that position he retained until the removal of the college to York in 1799, when he became a public and private teacher of mathematics and chemistry. During his residence in Kendal, Dalton had contributed solutions of.
Joseph Louis Lagrange - was already an accomplished mathematician, and was made a lecturer in the artillery school. The first fruit of Lagrange's labours here was his letter, written when he was still only nineteen, to Euler, in which he solved the isoperimetrical problem which for more than half a century had been a subject of discussion. To effect the solution (in which he sought to determine the form of a function so that a formula in which it entered should satisfy a certain condition) he enunciated the principles of the calculus of variations. Euler recognized the generality of the method adopted, and its superiority to that used by himself; and with rare courtesy he withheld a paper he had previously written, which covered some of the same ground, in order that the young Italian.
Johnston-Ruyer Back Therapy - since, when properly performed, they can provide a degree of immediate relief by helping the patient to use their back muscles much less while they are performing ordinary activities. The most effective proof of the method often comes when patients in great pain find they can move, for example rising up from a chair, without pain if they follow the prescribed movements for doing so very precisely. Table of contents showTocToggle("show","hide") 1 Evolution and our back 2 Using Other Muscles More 3 The Basic Program 4 The Stages of Rising From a Chair 5 Other Exercises Evolution and our back Evolution is usually a very gradual process but human evolution, while taking millions of years, has been very rapid on an Evolutionary scale. This quick change to an upright stance, unlike.