Paradigms and Research Programmes

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-213
Author(s):  
Andreas Dimmelmeier ◽  
Sheila Dow
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Imre Lakatos ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Research Programmes

This chapter studies paradigms and research programmes. A paradigm consists of a set of understandings of a scientific community during a historical period. At the most fundamental level, paradigms employ ontological assumptions. This means that the scientific community agrees on which things and phenomena exist and are meaningful for scientific inquiry. These assumptions determine the type of scientific investigations that are deemed worth pursuing. In addition, scientists inside a paradigm share a common methodological understanding of how to do science. Against the background of these broad and general understandings, scientists inside a paradigm formulate theories and carry out empirical research. Imre Lakatos developed the concept of ‘research programmes’ as an alternative to ‘paradigms’.

Characteristics of Scientific Inquiry

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Miksza ◽  
Kenneth Elpus
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Statistical Tools ◽  
Basic Characteristics ◽  
Historical Developments

This chapter introduces the reader to basic characteristics of science and situates the design and analysis considerations presented throughout the book within the context of scientific inquiry. A brief description of key historical developments regarding the philosophy of science is provided. An overview of the fundamental aspects of inductive and deductive scientific reasoning and the importance of falsification to scientific progress is presented. In addition, the values of objectivity and transparency as well as the importance of scientific community are stressed. The usefulness of statistical tools for helping researchers clarify their questions, establish criteria for their judgments, and communicate evidence for their claims is also discussed.

Confronting Scientific Misconceptions by Fostering a Classroom of Scientists in the Introductory Biology Lab

2014 ◽  
Vol 76 (8) ◽  
pp. 518-523
Author(s):  
Matthew L. Holding ◽  
Robert D. Denton ◽  
Amy E. Kulesza ◽  
Judith S. Ridgway
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Introductory Biology ◽  
Fundamental Component ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Science Curricula ◽  
Biology Lab ◽  
Student Inquiry

A fundamental component of science curricula is the understanding of scientific inquiry. Although recent trends favor using student inquiry to learn concepts through hands-on activities, it is often unclear to students where the line is drawn between the content and the process of science. This activity explicitly introduces students to the processes of science and allows the classroom to become a scientific community where independent studies are performed, shared, and revised. We designed this activity to be relatively independent of the chosen content, allowing instructors to utilize the presented framework for classes of various disciplines and education levels.

scholarly journals Issues in the Classification and Typology of Antique Masonry in the Writings of Foreign and Russian Scholars

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Andrei Grigorev
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Military Architecture ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
Stone Carving ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The article examines the problems in developing approaches for the description and stylistic interpretation of antique masonry, as well as the issues in their stylistic dating. The task of dating construction remains belonging to the 7th century B.C.E. to the turn of the era, has attracted the scholarly attention of the scientific community since the 1940s and has been considered by both foreign and Russian researchers. The article's research object is the construction remains of Greek civil and military architecture in the Mediterranean and the Northern Black Sea regions - territories considered to have been the center and periphery of the Greek Oikumena. The study applied the comparative-typological method, the synchronization of objects in time and space, and dating by analogy. Both in Russian and foreign studies a significant amount of data has been collected for the analysis and construction of appropriate conclusions regarding the distribution and popularity of certain masonry in particular periods of time. However, due to the presence of many factors affecting the ancient construction and stone-carving craft, a number of exceptions due to local natural, economic, raw material, and administrative factors can be distinguished in the observed patterns. Thus, the whole picture of the formation of the construction and stone-carving craft (with the allocation of the corresponding types of masonry in a certain historical period) can be reconstructed only with a comprehensive examination of all of them. As the most interesting objects in this regard, the article cites a number of architectural remains belonging to the monuments of the distant chora of Tauric Chersonesos dating to the second half of the 4th century B.C.E.

Linking Scientific Research to Development Agenda

2018 ◽  
pp. 374-391
Author(s):  
P. K. Kenabatho ◽  
B. P. Parida ◽  
B. Matlhodi ◽  
D.B. Moalafhi
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
The Impact

In recent years, the scientific community has been urged to undertake research that can immediately have impact on development issues, including national policies, strategies, and people's livelihoods, among others. While this is a fair call from decision makers, it should also be realized that science by nature is about innovation, discovery and knowledge generation. In this context, there is need for a balance between long term scientific investigations and short term scientific applications. With regard to the former, researchers spend years investigating (or need data of sufficient record length) to provide sound and reliable solutions to a problem at hand while in the latter, it is possible to reach a solution with few selected analyses. In all cases, it is advisable that researchers, where possible should link their studies to topical development issues in their case studies. In this paper, we use a hydrometeorological project in the Notwane catchment, Botswana, to show the importance of linking research to development agenda for mutual benefit of researchers and policy makers. The results indicate that some key development issues are being addressed by the Project and the scope exists to improve the impact of the project.

A Dose of Our Own Medicine: Alternative Medicine, Conventional Medicine, and the Standards of Science

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Haavi Morreim
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Medicine ◽  
Complementary And Alternative Medicine ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Conventional Medicine ◽  
Acupuncture Points ◽  
Free Ride ◽  
The People ◽  
Complementary And Alternative

The discussion about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is sometimes rather heated. “Quackery!” the cry goes. A large proportion “of unconventional practices entail theories that are patently unscientific.” “It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride. There cannot be two kinds of medicine — conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work.” “I submit that if these treatments cannot withstand the test of empirical research, … then we have wasted a lot of time and effort. The time has been wasted on all the people who have spent years learning falsehoods about acupuncture points and the principles of homeopathy. And the patients have wasted their time, money, and efforts receiving treatments that were not what they were represented to be or were harmful.”

scholarly journals Chris Lorenz's idea of conceptual inversion

HISTOREIN ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Ewa Domanska
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Imre Lakatos ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
New Empiricism ◽  
Proper Theory

The text deals with Chris Lorenz’s idea of conceptual inversion, understood as an epistemological blockade that stands as a barrier to the development of a proper theory of humanities and social sciences. According to Lorenz, the methodological and theoretical views of scientific programmes embody negations (i.e. inversions) of the views being criticized by them. Because of this process of “turning upside down”, many of the conceptual problems connected with the criticized positions survive. The author asks two questions: first, about the relation between Lorenz’s idea of conceptual inversion and Imre Lakatos’ idea of reconfigurations of research programmes, and, second, about possible common ground on which Lorenz’s interest in empiricism emerging out of his criticism of narrativism, and Ewa Domanska’s interest in new empiricism related to posthumanism (also critical of textual constructivism), could meet.

scholarly journals 一個氣功科學工作者的札記: 氣功科學的問題與思考

2001 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-121
Author(s):  
Peihua NI
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Scientific Attitude ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Digital Commons ◽  
Scientific Experiments ◽  
Take All

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.修煉氣功大有益於人的健康。但對於氣功那些令人震撼的效應，還沒有提出一套比較完整的氣功科學理論來加以解釋。然而，無法用當代已接受的科學理論來說明的現象不應一概斥之為迷信。當我們說“氣功科學”時，我們並不是說氣功已經是一門科學，而是說要以科學的態度、方法、手段和精神來對待氣功，研究氣功，努力開創一個科學探索的新領域。在這一探索中，還要注意從氣功的理論、世界觀和方法論出發來設計氣功科學實驗，而不是以常規科學的方式為萬能的或唯一正確的研究方式。Many people have noticed that practicing qigong is beneficial to human health. However, how does it work is not quite clear. Especially, there is no way to use the contemporarily accepted scientific theories to explain some strikingly impressive effects and phenomena that qigong practitioners have brought out. But we should not take all of them as superstitious simply because they cannot be brought to light by currently accepted scientific theories. Instead, we should seriously explore qigong science.When we speak "qigong science", we do not mean qigong is already a science. Rather, we mean that we ought to study qigong through scientific methods and in scientific attitude and spirit in order to open a new area for scientific inquiry. The basic spirit of science is honesty: truth is truth, and false is false. Science is not static. It is always developing. In scientific investigations of qigong, we must take notice to the special characteristics of qigong: its own theories, worldviews as well as methodologies. In designing scientific experiments on qigong, we should not take currently common scientific designing procedures and rules as absolute and universal standards. Rather, we should adapt them in ways of suiting the peculiar features of qigong practice so that useful information and results can be brought about.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 46 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

scholarly journals Is the secularization research programme progressing? Debate on Jörg Stolz’s article on Secularization theories in the 21st century: ideas, evidence, and problems

2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-329
Author(s):  
David Voas
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Imre Lakatos ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Research Programmes

The methodology of scientific research programmes, developed by Imre Lakatos, can help us to identify which theories are strong or weak. Applying this approach suggests that the secularization research programme is progressing, as Stolz argues. Some of the recent advances have been more successful than others, however. In particular, we have done better at understanding how secularization happens than why it happens.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-196
Author(s):  
Robert Wuthnow
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
The World

This chapter provided points about considering religion as a practice. It explains that the more people know about religion, the more they realize that its presence in the world is not only about tradition and belief but also about the messiness of everyday life that requires constant adaptation and recurrent improvisation. The chapter analyzes how religion is best understood as practice, profoundly challenging the notion that vast generalizations about religion can be attained from preconceived scientific investigations that seek to test variables and hypotheses. It also pays close attention to the details of religious practice in all its complexity and use of heuristic concepts in order the illuminate the particularities of those details. The chapter pulls together observations from the strands of empirical research that have been moving the study of religious practice in directions toward greater detail and with closer attention to the complexities and nuances involved.

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