Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

white, premises, historical, definitively, dispute, fallible, neutral, evidence, settling, sacrosanct, pseudo, scholarship, falsifiability, objective, observations, honors, realism, guarantee, Biblical, bearing, inference, bold, Galileo, predictions, relevant, universities, testable, Popper, better, scientific, technology, corpus, realist, sun, Bellarmine, same, wrong, repeatedly, indeterminate

•

two contrasts set                     scientific inquiries apart from other inquiries

•

1. science and             pseudo science

•

astronomy vs. astrology

•

similar

•

        same subject matter: what is in the sky

•

pseudo-science inquiries look very much like scientific inquiries

•

both gather                 evidence

•

both make                       predictions

•

dissimilar

•

astronomy makes bold claims that are                 testable and falsifiable

•

astrology makes vague claims that are not testable or falsifiable

•

astronomy taught at                         universities

•

2. science and non-science

•

literary theory as non-science

•

similar to science since it involves

•

•

gathering evidence

•

yield knowledge

•

dissimilar

•

science makes falsifiable claims

•

the trial of               Galileo

•

Galileo used a new                     technology to make observations of the heavens

•

                    Bellarmine appealed to evidence of scripture to argue the       sun orbits the earth

•

that had different conceptions for what counts as evidence for                 settling scientific questions, e.g. "what are the heavens like?"

•

Galileo thinks that evidence from direct                         observations count the most

•

Bellarmine thinks that evidence also includes the evidence of scripture

•

Bellarmine does not believe that observation has no               bearing at all on this question

•

Bellarmine believed that as the technology got             better, there may someday be enough evidence to make the case that the earth orbits the sun

•

Bellarmine did not believe that the evidence of scripture was                     sacrosanct

•

what is important is that Bellarmine thinks that the evidence of scripture is                 relevant to the question whereas Galileo doesn't

•

epistemic relativism

•

this is not relativism about truth

•

they both think that there is an objective issue that they are both trying to settle

•

the each think that one of them is right and one of them is           wrong

•

it's a relativism about what counts as evidence for what

•

it seems that because their conceptions of what counts as evidence are so different, that there is no way of settling their               dispute

•

there seems to be no               neutral ground between these two disputants

•

how do we say to Bellarmine that his                 Biblical evidence isn't relevant, or how to say to Galileo that it is relevant?

•

Galileo won the argument from a                     historical point of view and the perspective of the scientific revolution

•

and with the scientific revolution came a view opposed to epistemic relativism, that of scientific               realism

•

scientific realism

•

the goal of science is to uncover the                   objective truth about the world around us

•

scientific progress occurs when our theories accurately represent facts which can be                     repeatedly demonstrated

•

opposed to epistemic relativism, as there is an objective epistemic basis for evaluating scientific disagreements

•

which is why Galileo eventually won the argument

•

science             honors the kind of evidence that Galileo was interested in

•

not that which Bellarmine was interested in

•

what is it about the scientific method which makes it objective in a way that the scientific               realist maintains?

•

inductivism

•

induction vs. deduction

•

deductive inference says that if the                 premises are true, then the conclusion must be true

•

all swans are purple, X is a swan, therefore X is purple

•

inductive                   inference says that if the premises are true, the conclusion is only likely to be true

•

lots of swans that have been observed are white, therefore it is likely that all swans are           white

•

but this doesn't                   guarantee the truth of the conclusion

•

science proceeds by making inductive inferences

•

this kind of reasoning is                 fallible

•

although its fallible reasoning, it's a rational way to build a             corpus of facts about the world based on both observation, experimentation, testing and reasoning

•

•

approach of Karl Popper

•

says that the scientific method is essential deductive, not inductive

•

scientists do make lots of observations

•

but then make         bold conjectures about the way the world is

•

then they seek to refute and falsify those bold conjectures

•

e.g. (1) see lots of white swans, (2) make a bold conjecture that all swans are white, (3) go out and try to find the counter example that falsifies the bold conjecture

•

this is actually deduction: a conclusion refuted by a counter-example, e.g. there is a black swan, therefore it is not the case that all swans are white

•

claims are made bold so that they are falsifiable, they state clearly what will falsify them

•

            Popper argued that theories such as those of Marxim and Freudism are not falsifiable and are therefore not scientific claims

•

e.g. astrology makes inferences of various kinds

•

claims are very vague and                           indeterminate

•

it's unclear how one would go about testing them to                         definitively show that they are true or false

•

in contrast, the scientist comes up with bold conjectures

•

the conjectures being bold, they offer a straight-forward way of being tested