Scientific thinking, role

Pollard, A.M. (2004). Putting infinity up on trial a consideration of the role of scientific thinking in future archaeologies. In A Companion to Archaeology, ed. Bintliff, J., Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 380-396. 

Vernadsky draws the demarcation line between science proper and non-science, and between science and philosophy in particular, somewhere inside of what he calls the scientific worldview. He emphasised that it is sometimes very difficult to identify this line , J eering and going into a sophisticated mosaic of contemporary scientific worldview it is difficult to decide what in this worldview can be referred to as alien to scientific areas of human thought and what can be regarded as a result of pure scientific thinking" (Vernadsky, 1988 , p. 416). AH forms of spiritual activity play an important role in the development of science. Philosophy plays an especially important role An apparatus of scientific thought is cmde and imperfect it is improved, most of all, by means of the philosophical work of human consciousness" (Vernadsky, 1988, p. 72). In... 

In view of the role which Meyerhof played in our friendship, it seems appropriate to indicate briefly the fundamental notions that he developed, since they deeply influenced our scientific thinking. In a lecture, in 1913, in the Philosophical Society in Kiel Zur Energetik der Zellvorgaenge , he raised the problem of how the energy of foodstuffs, introduced into the organism, is eventually transformed into the energy required for specific cellular functions. The lecture reveals the depth of his philosophical and scientific thinking. 

The value of hard work and logical thinking shouldn t be underestimated but pure luck also plays a role in most real scientific breakthroughs. What has been called "the supreme example [of luck] in all scientific history" occurred in the late summer of 1928 when the Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming went on vacation, leaving in his lab a culture plate recently inoculated with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. 

I think it was worthwhile to take a specific case to show that conclusion. Its major purpose is to make Popperian logic and Kuhn s unpredictable circle of normal science, crisis, and revolution better known among chemists and to show how both theories - those of Popper and Kuhn - commingle in the development of scientific discoveries. A third phenomenon should also be mentioned, although it did not play a role in our specific case, namely serendipity, i. e., the gift of making valuable discoveries not sought for. The word serendipity was coined by the British writer Horace Walpole in a letter in 1754 based on the title of the Persian fairy-tale The... 

In the case of professional competence, perceptions are similarly prone to error. People are likely to overvalue men and undervalue women. One can expect gender schemas to play a role in evaluations whenever (1) schemas make a clear differentiation between males and females, and they do for professional competence as much as for height, and (2) evidence is ambiguous and open to interpretation, as is the case with professional competence. We are all tempted to think of scientific excellence as straightforward and objective, and we have difficulty seeing how much interpretation is required of the data in front of us. 

Within this book, we have attempted to present a comprehensive treatment of cave deposits. We are indebted to the patience and skill of the contributing authors. We are also bound to honor and thank the many amateur scientists and cave explorers who have helped cave scientists locate, explore, map and analyze the caves from which important data are collected. We can think of no other scientific discipline where the amateur plays as important a role in the development and advancement of a field. 

There is, I think, also a psychological preference for simplicity that is related to comprehensibihty, but which also may have an esthetic component. I will return to the psychology of explanation after finishing this brief review of the principal proposals for scientific explanation from the community of professional philosophers. In completing the summary of Boyd s position, though, I would say that the evidence for the important role of nonexperimental factors that Boyd cites as the reason to overthrow Humean causation is not clear-cut. I guess I remain a Humean at heart. 

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