PS101 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Francis Bacon, Dian Fossey, Naturalistic Observation
Document Summary
Two characteristics that all sciences share are the similar principles or beliefs about how to best understand the world, and the reliance on the scienti c method as a way of discovering and sharpening knowledge. Two essential beliefs: the universe operates according to certain natural laws. What happens around us occurs in a form of an orderly fashion that can be described using rules or laws. Relies on the processes of logical reasoning derived from philosophy. Start with big and general ideas and apply them to speci c situations. Sir francis bacon believed that deductive reasoning was too susceptible to the thinkers biases (distorted beliefs on a persons subjective sense of reality) Personal beliefs or conventional wisdom that a particular thinker mistakenly accepts as broad, basic truths. Widely accepted conventional wisdom can be incomplete, biased, or just wrong. Inductive reasoning: reasoning process proceeding from small speci c situations to more general truths.
