Scientific Perspectivism and the Methodology of Modern Mathematical Physics

Perspectival realists often appeal to the methodology of science to secure a realist account of the retention and continued success of scientific claims through the progress of science (e.g. Massimi, 2016). However, in the context of modern physics, the retention and continued success of scientific claims is typically only definable within a mathematical framework. In this paper, I argue that this concern leaves the perspectivist open to Cassirer’s (1910) neo-Kantian critique of the applicability of mathematics in the natural sciences. To support this criticism, I present a case study on the conservation of energy in modern physics.

Interdisciplinary perspective-taking within argumentation: students’ strategies across science and religious education

The importance of developing students’ argumentation skills is well established across the curriculum: students should grasp how claims are made and supported in different disciplines. One challenge is to follow and thereby agree with or critique the arguments of others, which requires perspective-taking, in tracing these other reasons and reasoning. This challenge is increased when disciplines construct argumentation and perspective-taking differently. Here, we consider the role of perspective-taking in argumentation within and between science education and pluralistic religious education, where the former aims at the justification of scientific claims and the latter at both an empathetic understanding of different religions and worldviews, and personal reasoning. We interpretively analyze student data to identify salient features of students’ strategies to perspective-taking within argumentation. Data from 324 pupils across nine schools are explored in relation to students’ challenges in perspective-taking, strategies for perspective-taking within argumentation, and the use of perspective-taking to construct personal argumentation. The analysis shows some barriers to perspective-taking within argumentation, the range of students’ perspective-taking strategies within argumentation, and how personal argumentation could hermeneutically build upon perspective-taking strategies. The importance and implications of perspective-taking within argumentation across the curriculum are considered highlighting challenges in the etic/emic shift, both within the individual subject as well as across them, and some reflections on how this provides a fresh pedagogical perspective on the science/religions debate are made. To end, we conclude with the wider challenges for disciplines and perspective-taking across schooling and university.

Why most psychological research findings are not even wrong

Psychology’s replication crisis is typically conceptualised as the insight that the published literature contains a worrying amount of unreplicable, false-positive findings. At the same time, meta-scientific attempts to assess the crisis in more detail have reported substantial difficulties to identify unambiguous definitions of the scientific claims in published articles and to determine how they are connected to the presented evidence. I argue that most claims in the literature are so critically underspecified that attempts to empirically evaluate them are doomed to failure — they are not even wrong. Meta-scientists should beware of the flawed assumption that the psychological literature is a collection of well-defined claims. To move beyond the crisis, psychologists must reconsider and rebuild the conceptual basis of their hypotheses before trying to test them.

Reviewing the logic of social scientific claims

This paper considers three different claims to knowledge, namely, “fully descriptive”, “generally descriptive” and causal claims. These are all common in social science, and each type of claim requires more assumptions than the previous one. After discussing their methodological and logical foundations, this paper describes some of the limitations in the nature of these three claims. Fully descriptive claims suffer from non-random errors and inaccuracies in observations, and can be queried in terms of utility. Generally, in addition to observational errors, descriptive can be questioned because of the long-standing problem of induction. Even the notion of falsification might not be able to help with this. Finally, causal claims are the most problematic of the three. While widely assumed, causation cannot be observed directly. The paper combines and develops three models of what causation might be, and discusses their implications for causal claims. It points out that so far our belief in causation is still a kind of religious one, and that neither theory nor inferential statistics can help in proving or observing its existence. Finally, the paper provides some suggestions for avoiding being misled by false knowledge and reporting our research findings with tentative care and judgement.

Information Easiness Affects Non-experts’ Evaluation of Scientific Claims About Which They Hold Prior Beliefs

Usually, non-experts do not possess sufficient deep-level knowledge to make fully informed evaluations of scientific claims. Instead, they depend on pertinent experts for support. However, previous research has shown that the easiness by which textual information on a scientific issue can be understood seduces non-experts into overlooking their evaluative limitations. The present study examined whether text easiness affects non-experts’ evaluation of scientific claims even if they possess prior beliefs about the accuracy of these claims. Undergraduates who strongly believed that climate change is anthropogenic read argumentative texts that were either easy or difficult to understand and that supported a claim either consistent or inconsistent with their beliefs. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that text easiness affects non-experts’ judgment of scientific claims about which they hold prior beliefs—but only when these claims are in accordance with their beliefs. It seems that both text difficulty and belief inconsistency remind non-experts of their own limitations.

How Do Individuals Think About Knowledge and Knowing?

In everyday encounters with new information, conflicting ideas, and claims made by others, one has to decide who and what to believe. Can one trust what scientists say? What’s the best source of information? These are questions that involve thinking and reasoning about knowledge, or what psychologists call “epistemic cognition.” In Chapter 5, “How Do Individuals Think About Knowledge and Knowing?,” the authors explain how public misunderstanding of scientific claims can often be linked to misconceptions about the scientific enterprise itself. Drawing on their own research and that of others, the authors explain how individuals’ thinking about knowledge influences their science doubt, resistance, and denial. They explain how educators and communicators can enhance public understanding of science by emphasizing how scientific knowledge is created and evaluated and why it should be valued.

The Art of Slouching: Posture in Punk

In this chapter, the author argues that the way performers of punk music inhabit the stage, through hunched postures, gains significance when set against the backdrop of a longer history framing the meaning of posture. Punk postures often represent pain as both kinesthetic and visceral. As discourses about posture move away from questions about morality and class, attached to the upright postures of “proper” citizens, and toward scientific claims about alignment and health concerns, novel performance practices ensue, infused with new musical meanings. The author suggests that theatrical punk performers who display different body organizations demonstrate not only the pain of being asked to “align” and “fix” their bodies to fit in, but also alternative meanings of success in society that are not built on able-bodied discourses but often nevertheless attuned to the desire for power.

Critical thinking and the methodology of science

Scientific literacy concerns understanding the methodology of science at least as much as understanding scientific knowledge. More than this, it also requires an understanding of why the methodology of science delivers (or fails to deliver) epistemic credibility. To justify scientific claims as credible, it is important to understand how the nature of our reasoning is embodied in scientific methodology and how the limits of our reasoning are therefore the limits of our inquiry. This paper makes explicit how aspects of critical thinking, including argumentation and reasoning, underpin the methodology of science in the hope of making the development of scientific literacy in students more actionable.