TOK essay
TOK
You can not call a house made of nothing but a pile of bricks, a house, as it needs cement around its stones to have them stick together to be build from its base, all the way tot he roof. Other factors would be glass for windows and tiles for the roof, which is why neither a pile of bricks, nor just a design is what makes up the house.
Henri Poincare uses the metaphor of a house to describe science. But what we need to consider is the definition of a fact and also by what process these facts are gathered.
Knowledge is gathered differently depending on who is the “gatherer”. Scientists use something called the 'scientific method' to find out facts about what they have observed and what they think happened. Scientists will observe something happening, and will collect data of what they see. The imagination of the scientist is used to come up with a hypothesis of what they think the reason for the ball falling is. They will collect a lot of data and try to reach a conclusion of why it happens. If the hypothesis they predicted is wrong then they will have to come up with a different prediction of what is happening. If the results obtained by the other tests match the theory or the prediction that the original scientists made, then the prediction becomes a law. This fact can always be falsified, i.e. we never know if the next result that we collect will follow the theory or if it is totally different and disprove the idea.
Henri Poincare suggested that science is built like a house, with the facts that make up science compared to the bricks making up the house. By saying that with only bricks you cannot make a house he suggests that you need other necessary materials like cement, tiles, modrock and a slot to start building. As well as this he suggests that in science you also need other materials, the imagination of the scientist to come up with ideas of why things happen.
A house shows that all of the bricks and all the other factors work together
You can not call a house made of nothing but a pile of bricks, a house, as it needs cement around its stones to have them stick together to be build from its base, all the way tot he roof. Other factors would be glass for windows and tiles for the roof, which is why neither a pile of bricks, nor just a design is what makes up the house.
Henri Poincare uses the metaphor of a house to describe science. But what we need to consider is the definition of a fact and also by what process these facts are gathered.
Knowledge is gathered differently depending on who is the “gatherer”. Scientists use something called the 'scientific method' to find out facts about what they have observed and what they think happened. Scientists will observe something happening, and will collect data of what they see. The imagination of the scientist is used to come up with a hypothesis of what they think the reason for the ball falling is. They will collect a lot of data and try to reach a conclusion of why it happens. If the hypothesis they predicted is wrong then they will have to come up with a different prediction of what is happening. If the results obtained by the other tests match the theory or the prediction that the original scientists made, then the prediction becomes a law. This fact can always be falsified, i.e. we never know if the next result that we collect will follow the theory or if it is totally different and disprove the idea.
Henri Poincare suggested that science is built like a house, with the facts that make up science compared to the bricks making up the house. By saying that with only bricks you cannot make a house he suggests that you need other necessary materials like cement, tiles, modrock and a slot to start building. As well as this he suggests that in science you also need other materials, the imagination of the scientist to come up with ideas of why things happen.
A house shows that all of the bricks and all the other factors work together