BleedingHeart, I would agree. In particular, question #1 is something that could go either way. I would have said "no", because one has to be prepared for the possibility that experimental results don't yield what the theoretical pathway would "show". But I can see why they say the answer is the opposite, since one should also have a "feel" for how an experiment will tend to go.
quote:
Scientific “proofs” are not the same things as logical proofs. Science relies on induction and inference far too much for its results to be equated with those of deductive logic, and scientists are perfectly comfortable with that, as discussed in point #1 above.
I want to cause a bit of thread drift here. 
One thing I've found that distinguishes my chemistry and physics classes from my math classes is the de-emphasization of mathematically rigorous thinking and symbolic usage in science classes.
One example will suffice: Often in physics a single integral symbol is used for what would normally be required to be explicitly written as a double or triple integral. This can trip up a lot of the pure math majors, and I've had math students complain to me about the "sloppiness" of the reasoning process in science. 
We are interested in math inasmuch as it provides a tool to interpret and analyze what it is that we see in the physical world. We are not interested in abstract mathematical proofs, and in fact work better when simply told how to apply a mathematical construct in the proper manner.
For example it's not necessary to me to prove, mathematically, why you can always solve a differential equation uniquely given enough initial conditions. It's sufficient for me to be told that this is so, and to use this property to completely describe a model of a physical system. 
End thread drift.
Scientific literacy, I think, has dropped in the last thirty years. It is my feeling that both ends of the political spectrum have "less use" for science as time goes on, and simply pick and choose what aspects of it they will embrace.
We all know of the political conservatives who find it convenient to ignore the mounting data that indicates that smoking irritates the lungs, promotes certain cancers and is in general unhealthy; or the conservatives who ignore the mounting evidence that we humans are changing the ecosystem for our own benefit, including dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But there are political liberals who find it just as easy to ignore certain aspects of science as well: the persistent belief in "new age" philosophies, or the belief in psychic phenomena without any rigorous backing for them, and so on. In particular, they seem to associate science with "progress" that they don't want, and seek to turn away from it.
Part of this lack of understanding of science comes from the (I believe) mistaken thought that science will not be able to undo the problems it created. I disagree. It is abundantly clear that while different tools are needed to undo a problem than to make one, the basic method by which the problem is undone must be scientific, since it is understanding how the problem got created in the first place that yields part of the solution.
Furthermore, all science is of a piece. Disregard evolutionary theory and while you may not really weaken your understanding or appreciation of physics overmuch, you will have to ignore aspects of biochemistry that rely on evolutionary biology to explain why, for example, all animals have similar oxygen transport mechanisms in their blood, and so on.
Disregard ozone depletion and you have to completely ignore the fact that standard inorganic chemistry can explain it on the basis of free radical formation, so you would really be ignoring free radical chemistry.
And so on, and so forth. One cannot ignore parts of science without weakening one's understanding of the whole.
Now this is not to say that scientists never disagree. They do. But they agree on the general principles of science. What they are disagreeing about is often about the interpretation of experimental data; for example, some people once thought they had found a true noble-gas compound with water. Others disagreed that this was possible due to the known unreactiveness of those gases. Upon deeper analysis, it turned out that they were simply entrained in the water as a clathrate. Still useful, but not a true compound.
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posted 28 July 2004 11:15 AM
