STS1010 Midterm

5 myths/misconceptions of learning

1. intelligence is pre-determined

2. easy learning is more helpful than effortful learning

3. memorization is not a part of real learning

4. learning styles are the most helpful over learning with all 5 senses

5. repetition and massed practice is helpful

What % of information learned in the classroom will not be recalled?

70%

Problems with conventional approaches

1. brain function: the brain’s energy is focused on survival

2. academic education: formal education is unnatural

3. we think we are more intelligent than we are: we don’t know what we don’t know

4. fluency allusion: understanding something doesn’t mean we recall it

5. familiarity trap: exposure to information doesn’t guarantee we can recall it

What are the characteristics of helpful learning?

1. effort-based: the harder it is to remember = better chance of recall

2. broadly applicable: the more you can connect specifics to the bigger picture, the better you will remember it

3. meaningful: if you care about it, you will remember it

What are the 3 stages of learning?

1. encoding

2. consolidation

3. retrieval

What is necessary for retrieval to be characterized as?

1. effortful

2. delayed

3. repeated

What is helpful for retrieval to be characterized as?

1. spaced (when)

2. interleaved (what)

3. varied (how)

What kind of retrieval methods do not work?

1. massed practice

2. blocked practice

What are the 3 advanced methods of retrieval?

1. generation

2. reflection

3. schematizing

What is the aim of science?

• to develop a body of knowledge which is justified and true

• yet, pessimistic meta induction suggests that since our past findings in science were proved to be wrong, that what we believe to be true now is also wrong

• knowledge must be justified with reason and evidence

• we may not be closer to Knowledge, but we are further from ignorance

• science is an action, not a thing

What is the aim of technology?

• to employ justified beliefs and achieve practical solutions to concrete problems

• truth has no application to technology, it only aims to create efficient solutions

• technology has no morality; it cannot be classified as right or wrong

• all technology is a product of mankind

What is the definitional difference between science and technology?

• the aims: science aims to gain knowledge through justified truth, and technology aims to gain knowledge through belief

• their purposes: science aims to develop a body of knowledge, and technology aims to create practical solutions to concrete problems

• science is harder and about knowledge (justified truth)

• technology is about application (justified belief); technology works best with other technologies (complementary technology)

What is the historical difference between science and technology?

• technology has been around longer than science and prompted scientific development

• TECH - Medieval: Greeks interested but no methodology or experimentation; Romans not interested in the things the greeks were (aquaducts, bridges, roadways, arches, buildings)

• TECH - Middle Ages: plow, horse collar, watermill, and windmill

• SCI WITH TECH - modern: heliocentric model from spyglass, weight of air from air pump, thermodynamics from steam engine, chemistry from Bessemer process

What are the developmental differences between science and technology?

• both develop incrementally, but science is punctured by noncumulative growth

What are the key similarities between science and technology?

they are both systems of belief that require justification

What is knowledge?

true justified belief

What is truth?

NOT subjective, corresponds with reality

What is justification?

1. reason + evidence

2. the work of normal science

What is pessimistic meta induction?

• the idea that science will continue to prove itself to be wrong over and over

• all science’s efforts to describe reality will turn out to be false inevitably

• example: the earth was not the center of our galaxy; heliocentric model proved to be truth

What does the optimistic view of meta induction consist of?

• each failed scientific idea was followed by a better and true one

• just as science can be seen as constant failures, it can also be seen as constant advancement

What is inductive inference and how is it ampliative?

• draws a generalized conclusion from a limited data set

• amplifies the data

Explain how science is corrigible.

• science still can produce incorrect answers despite how experienced an experimentalist may be

• science cannot be expected to be perfect because it is the product of human beings

• science is constantly changing with new observations

• the best and most justified information will prevail

• we are not getting more right, but we are getting less wrong

What is a theory according to science? To the public?

• science: a body of justified beliefs building from a set of observations to general claims which describe or explain a domain of phenomena

• public: a guess; not justified

What is a hypothesis according to science? To the public?

• science: a proposed explanation for causal relationships; must be empirically testable to be considered scientific

• public: a proposed idea that has not been tested or verified

What is a law according to science? To the public?

• science: a body of justified beliefs building from a set of observations to general claims which describe or explain a domain of directly observable phenomena; considered an old term

• a fact or true statement that is not to be negotiated

What is technoscience?

• the recent intersection of science and technology

• cutting edge science requires cutting edge technology, and cutting edge technology requires more sophisticated technology (they build on each other)

• examples: biomedicine, semiconductor, nanotechnology

Explain penicillin, the implications, and the scaling up process.

don’t need to know :)

Explain the development of the camera and photography with vertical and horizontal development.

• steps:

  • 4 things created first camera: paper, camera obscura, chemistry, and lenses (complimentary technologies)

  • paper was further developed into film

  • George Eastman created the Kodak Brownie

• vertical development: one piece of technology improves over time

• horizontal development: complementary technologies come together to make one better technology

• social motivation: portraits were only affordable by the rich; the middle class emerged; the middle class was able to get their pictures taken as it was more affordable; photographer’s and painter’s jobs were ended as the Kodak Brownie emerged

Explain the Sony Walkman example and how it can be indirect.

• consumers first told Sony we did not want the Walkman, but then it gained popularity

• allowed for individual experience and privacy through separation

• technological determinism: technology drives humans

• singles became popular

• we don’t know the outcomes of our own technology

• we don’t know what we want until we have it; consumers are not good judges of what they think they want

• an example of incremental development

Cowles hypothesis

• order: hypothesis, evidence for it, criticism, takeaway

• Crustaceous period

• sterilized males through heating up of the earth

• tested Galileo’s assumption that the larger the surface area the greater the volume proportionally

• Cowles concluded dinosaurs could not cool down fast enough and confirmed that Galileo was right with alligator experiment which created Cowles theory

• crtiques:

  • tissue could not fossilize

  • this assumes they could not regulate their own temperature

  • marine life died out too

  • there is no “close enough” in science

• bad science

• gained traction because it seemed “sciencey”

Seigel

• order: hypothesis, evidence for it, criticism, takeaway

• angiosperms had psychoactive agents with were toxic

• fossils were found in mangled configurations

• animals were found to self administer alcohol (elephants drank beer when anxious although they did not like any drink above 7% concentration)

• critiques:

  • livers and tongues do not fossilize

  • we have no evidence that they could taste bitterness or digest toxins

  • angiosperms developed 10 million years before the Crustaceous period

• social motivation: it got traction because of the cultural relevance

• was not testable, generous, or expansive; people only cared because it was relevant

• time: 80s

Alvarez

• order: hypothesis, evidence for it, criticism, takeaway

• A comet hit the earth, created a dust cloud, and cooled down the earth to temperatures that life could not survive and stopped photosynthesis

• oceanic plankton died from this lack of photosynthesis

• plants survived through the dormancy of their seeds

• social motivation: we tend to be blinded to the science because of the fear of extinction; socially relevant due to the fear of nuclear war

• time: 80s

• iridium was found on the outer layer of the earth from space

• testable, generous, expansive

• gave scientists more to test and research

• good/real science

What are complementary technologies?

technologies that go together/come from each other

What is scaling up?

making a product distributable on a big scale; penicillin example

Social motivation

address for developmental topics

What is a paradigm?

• the framework or lens through which scientists see their work

• WHAT: the theories accepted snd believed by researchers in the discipline

• HOW: the standards of the discipline

• WHY: the outstanding questions and phenomena that the paradigm should solve or explain

• anomalies: phenomena the paradigm should explain but doesn’t

What is a paradigm shift? (scientific development/revolution)

• also called a scientific revolution

• steps:

  • anomalies emerge due to gaps in knowledge that the hypothesis can’t explain

  • a new hypothesis gets suggested that can explain anomalies

  • the old hypothesis is favored due to how much time it has been around and evidence

  • when 2 hypotheses are so different that they can’t be put again each other, they are incommensurable

  • crucial evidence comes along to prove one theory wrong

  • a scientific crisis ensues, and everything we knew up until the shift gets proven wrong

Identify what boyle and the royal society contributed.

• they were geniuses

• Royal Society:

  • public experimentation: the public will only believe what we see

    • qualified observers must be present to have a takeaway

• Boyle:

  • wanted to bring science to the people

  • reporting: careful recording of experimental results

  • replication: an experiment must be replicable for its results to be credible

What is science (not aims)?

• fruitful mode of inquiry

• body of knowledge

• generous, testable, expansive

What is normal science?

the incremental phase of scientific development characterized by what the majority of researchers in a given scientific discipline hold to be true; in simple words = what is considered right in science

What is falsification?

the process used to determine if an experiment’s unexpected results are the result of faulty experiment execution, a faulty premise, or a faulty hypothesis; in simple words = finding what is false and eliminating it

What is causality?

events linked by necessity

What is correlation?

events linked by proximity; no necessary relationship

What is a coincidence?

no relationship between events