Reflection
Chapter 3: Posing the Questions
In the third chapter of City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society, the author discusses the "romance of science", how we build hypotheses and conduct research and how ideologies and values form our way of thinking. This chapter is important as it challenges the reader to think more analytically and to challenge ideas they may already have formed. "As the late astronomer Carl Sagan put it, 'skeptical scrutiny is the means, in...science...by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense...'" (page 74). By constantly challenging ideas and uncovering new research to test theories, one can further pass information down from generation to generation. Also, by using proper scientific methods we can separate fact from fiction and better understand new ideas. When discussing scientific method, the author concentrates on: reasoning processes, systematic analysis and hypothesis construction. Reasoning processes is divided into two ways of gaining knowledge: inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Both types of reasoning are important in research as they assist in developing theories through induction and deduction. Inductive reasoning is defined as the process of reasoning from particular examples to general principles (page 96). One example as found in "Step by Step Research", Kimberly Porter Martin, Ph.D. is, "...if you are driving around a community and you see lots of bumper stickers on cars, all of which have people's names on them, you might draw the conclusion that the community was having an election." By using induction, you might hypothesize that based on the presence of the bumper stickers, there is an upcoming election. From our current hypothesis of the bumper stickers and upcoming election, science requires that we test it using further evidence. This would require deductive reasoning, defined as the process of reasoning from general principles to particular examples (page 96). We have already
In the third chapter of City Lights: Urban-Suburban Life in the Global Society, the author discusses the "romance of science", how we build hypotheses and conduct research and how ideologies and values form our way of thinking. This chapter is important as it challenges the reader to think more analytically and to challenge ideas they may already have formed. "As the late astronomer Carl Sagan put it, 'skeptical scrutiny is the means, in...science...by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense...'" (page 74). By constantly challenging ideas and uncovering new research to test theories, one can further pass information down from generation to generation. Also, by using proper scientific methods we can separate fact from fiction and better understand new ideas. When discussing scientific method, the author concentrates on: reasoning processes, systematic analysis and hypothesis construction. Reasoning processes is divided into two ways of gaining knowledge: inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Both types of reasoning are important in research as they assist in developing theories through induction and deduction. Inductive reasoning is defined as the process of reasoning from particular examples to general principles (page 96). One example as found in "Step by Step Research", Kimberly Porter Martin, Ph.D. is, "...if you are driving around a community and you see lots of bumper stickers on cars, all of which have people's names on them, you might draw the conclusion that the community was having an election." By using induction, you might hypothesize that based on the presence of the bumper stickers, there is an upcoming election. From our current hypothesis of the bumper stickers and upcoming election, science requires that we test it using further evidence. This would require deductive reasoning, defined as the process of reasoning from general principles to particular examples (page 96). We have already