Warrants scientific knowledge

Experts (in the broad sense that I have used the term) frequently deploy more than one type of warrant to make judgments as conditions warrant. But these warrants are not interchangeable. Scientific knowledge and engineering experience are closely related to the extent that they operate most visibly in the domain of the verbal and analytic (e.g., knowledge perceived and interpreted through instrumentation, written reports, and inscriptions). But this apparent similarity may mask differences in the nature of these warrants and the implications of each type of warrant for future policy and procedure. ... 

Scientists themselves frequently deploy more than one type of warrant as a guide to risk decision making. Despite its apparent distance from material experience in local sites, scientific knowledge makes sense only if scientists construct physically probable objects that conform to actual conditions underground. If representations fail to meet these expectations, both mathematical calculations and verbal conclusions must be adjusted to conform to the material possibilities of density, specific gravity, and the like. 

The Bilsthorpe disaster was a particularly vivid reminder of the ways that the strategic choice of warrants—in this case scientific knowledge—influences how writers locate liability and responsibility for risk judgments in risky environments. As Fig. 6.2 demonstrates, the roof fall occurred above the level of the bolts, beyond the limits of either technical control or scientific prediction. As a result, the entire roof fell as a massive block weighing more than 80,000 pounds, crushing miners, who had little or no warning of the impending disaster despite the presence of tell-tale monitors (sensometers) embedded in the mine roof. ... 

Ignoring its own evidence that some miners used embodied sensory knowledge to detect the indications of disaster, the HSE uses miners testimony to argue for increased research to understand rock behavior. In focusing on the unpredictability of scientific knowledge as a warrant for risk decisions, the HSE s conclusion fails to acknowledge how new technologies affect the warrantability of risk decisions in local sites. 

Because she can represent two different warrants in speech and gesture, Libby can integrate theory and practice simultaneously in a single narrative. But her scientific knowledge becomes apparent only when we examine the viewpoints represented in gesture. 

Science may be defined as a body of knowledge that is systematically derived from study, observations, and experimentation. Its goal is to identify and establish principles and theories that may be applied to solve problems. Pseudoscience, on the other hand, is a belief that is not warranted. There is no scientific methodology or application. 

Stating hypotheses (tentative explanations to causal questions) constitutes, in general, a complex process of combining empirical evidence, previous knowledge, and intuition (Lawson, 1995). The role of argument in this process seems to be crucial. Partial scientific claims towards an explanatory framework do need to be well grounded in warranting structures that are built on reliable epistemic criteria (Driver et al., 2000). Furthermore, the possible formulation of more than one alternative hypothesis for the same causal question, activates a process of comparative evaluation of their explanatory efficacy to decide which one is the... 

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