In “Why We Should Trust Scientists,” by Naomi Oreskes, the presenter describes what makes science so unique, and distinguishes it from other fields such as religion. Oreskes claims that science is an appeal to authority, but unlike other similar appeals, it is the collective authority of a group of people, somewhat like a community. Throughout her speech, she conveys to her audience different examples of historical figures who worked in science, and uses them as proofs to help understand the point that she is making. In doing so, she describes that what makes this specific field so special, is the fact that science itself, and the ways that one tries to test a theory on a specific subject are not related; but rather, as was said by Paul Feyerabend
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Most of it is deductive, as she uses evidence from prior events in history to explain the current day harm that her presentation is trying to find solvency for. However, in a clever turn of events, Oreskes manages to ironically explain why the scientific method - which is similar to deductive reasoning and quite common in basic scientific education - is not the way that science is typically studied in modern times. Instead, inductive reasoning is more commonly used by scientists today. However, as mentioned during the presentation, it is easy to make a hasty generalization when studying science, and that it is important that we take the necessary steps to prove scientific theory. So, instead of being able to make something such as an argument from sign, where the occurrence of one thing often leads to something similar happening, we are unable to do such things in science, as the field is too broad to be understood without knowing every last …show more content…
This model, which was intended to demonstrate Copernicus’ grounds that the Earth moving around the sun, was seemingly disproved back then in what is now called an auxiliary hypothesis. This was a sort of indirect red herring, where the topic that was being studied was mistakenly sidetracked by those making the studies themselves. Consequently, this led to the Earth’s placement in the universe being mistaken for hundreds of years, proving to be a mishap in reasoning from cause that would only happen to be refuted in recent years when NASA managed to provide counter-evidence that showed that the Earth did in fact move around the
Most of it is deductive, as she uses evidence from prior events in history to explain the current day harm that her presentation is trying to find solvency for. However, in a clever turn of events, Oreskes manages to ironically explain why the scientific method - which is similar to deductive reasoning and quite common in basic scientific education - is not the way that science is typically studied in modern times. Instead, inductive reasoning is more commonly used by scientists today. However, as mentioned during the presentation, it is easy to make a hasty generalization when studying science, and that it is important that we take the necessary steps to prove scientific theory. So, instead of being able to make something such as an argument from sign, where the occurrence of one thing often leads to something similar happening, we are unable to do such things in science, as the field is too broad to be understood without knowing every last …show more content…
This model, which was intended to demonstrate Copernicus’ grounds that the Earth moving around the sun, was seemingly disproved back then in what is now called an auxiliary hypothesis. This was a sort of indirect red herring, where the topic that was being studied was mistakenly sidetracked by those making the studies themselves. Consequently, this led to the Earth’s placement in the universe being mistaken for hundreds of years, proving to be a mishap in reasoning from cause that would only happen to be refuted in recent years when NASA managed to provide counter-evidence that showed that the Earth did in fact move around the