This week in chapter twelve the main concept that caught my attention was assumptions underling science. The reason it caught my attention was because it is the structure that science and scientist must follow. There are five key assumptions and those are empiricism, objectivity, materialism, predictability, and unity. I will discuss what I thought each meant starting with empiricism. Empiricism is the belief that are physical senses are the primary source of knowledge, as the book explains. I thought that this meant that we have to experience the world by trial and error in order to gain knowledge. Next assumption is Objectivity, which the book describes as "the belief that we observe and study the physical world "our there" as an object outside of us without bias on the part of the scientist/observer". I thought that this was straight forward because scientist must conduct experiments with no desired outcome that will show their opinion. The third assumption is Materialism, which literally means that everything around us, including ourselves, are made up of physical matter. The next assumption is Predictability, which simply means that our world has order and can be predicted at times. This however, does not hold true especially with Quantum Mechanics. Last we have the assumption of Unity, which states that everything in the universe is connected some how some way. I really like these concepts because they were a great way to kick of the chapter. It gave me a sense of having some background in science.
Heisenberg.
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