COMM 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Academic Writing

• School: U of M
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 101
• Professor: Julia Lippman

Document Summary

Science: the search for natural explanations for natural phenomena: social science: the search for natural explanations for the ways people think and act. Scienti c method: theory: a natural, testable, overarching explanation for scienti c observation. Science cannot use magic, ghosts, god, or because i said so . Must make predictions that are falsi able (i. e. that could be wrong) Science gathers evidence and sees how well that evidence supports various theories. Even when the evidence provides strong support, a theory can turn out to be wrong. Since scientists don"t accept a theory on faith, they continue to challenge their ideas. Take away #1: science is about evidence, not proof. Fact: facts are boring, unless a theory ties them together, theory: an asteroid 65 million years ago was responsible for the dinosaurs" extinction. This is consistent with facts and makes a testable prediction. This tied together the facts into a larger proposal about how things happened.