Exploring Scientific Thinking and Research

Aug 31, 2024

Lecture Notes: Earth Parts by Dr. Johnson Hoss

Critical and Skeptical Thinking

  • Important to try multiple explanations for a problem.
  • Seek alternate solutions fitting the available evidence.
  • Essential to identify holes in your own explanation.
  • Science aims to disprove rather than just prove an idea.

Process of Scientific Research

  • Examine problems from multiple directions and perspectives.
  • Competing ideas in science are tested, and only the strong survive.
  • Science progresses by ruling out disproven explanations.

Healthy Scientific Approach

  • Do not assume initial interpretations are correct.
  • Being wrong provides an opportunity to learn and improve.
  • Provisional conclusions should be adjusted with new information.

Importance of Quantification

  • Quantifying helps in understanding and removing emotion from analysis.
  • Quantification aids in dealing with abstract concepts like geological time.
  • Hard numbers offer clarity over vague intuition.

Logical Argumentation

  • Valid arguments must rest on valid premises, building logically step by step.
  • Every link in a logical chain must be sound.

Occam's Razor

  • Often misunderstood; true principle is choosing the explanation with the fewest unnecessary assumptions.
  • Example: Face on Mars theory and unnecessary assumptions about Martian civilization.

Testability in Science

  • An idea must be testable to be pursued scientifically.
  • String theory as an example of a concept that's currently untestable.
  • Testable concepts can be examined, non-testable ones are not within scientific pursuit potential.