1. Read the text and answer the questions:
1.Dwell upon the following statement: Science as a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge.
2.What does it mean “classical antiquity science”?
3. What does the term “Science” mean in the modern language?
4. What can you say about history of science and scientific revolution?
5. What is ‘Etimology”?
2. Consult a dictionary, find out diverse meanings and practice their pronunciation:
Universe, reliable, rationally, antiquity, restrict, empirical, the dawn of, premises, emphasize, deduce,
Skim the following text and do the tasks below; you should spend about 20 minutes
The Scientific method
A ‘Hypotheses,’ said Medawar in 1964,‘are imaginative and inspirational in character’; they are ‘adventures of the mind’. He was arguing in favour of the position taken by Karl Popper in The
Logic of Scientific Discovery (1972, 3rd edition) that the nature of scientific method is hypothetico-deductive and not, as is generally believed, inductive.
B It is essential that you, as an intending researcher, understand the difference between these two interpretations of the research process so that you do not become discouraged or begin to suffer from a feeling of ‘cheating’ or not going about it the right way.
C The myth of scientific method is that it is inductive: that the formulation of scientific theory starts with the basic, raw evidence of the senses - simple, unbiased, unprejudiced observation. Out of these sensory data – commonly referred to as ‘facts’ — generalizations will form. The myth is that from a disorderly array of factual information an orderly, relevant theory will somehow emerge. However, the starting
point of induction is an impossible one.
D There is no such thing as an unbiased observation. Every act of observation we make is a function of what we have seen or otherwise experienced in the past. All scientific work of an experimental or exploratory nature starts with some expectation about the outcome. This expectation is a hypothesis. Hypotheses provide the initiative and incentive for the inquiry and influence the method. It is in the light of an expectation that some observations are held to be relevant and some irrelevant, that one methodology is chosen and others discarded, that some experiments are conducted and others are not. Where is, your naive, pure and objective researcher now?
E Hypotheses arise by guesswork, or by inspiration, but having been formulated they can and must be tested rigorously, using the appropriate methodology. If the predictions you make as a result of deducing certain consequences from your hypothesis are not shown to be correct then you discard or modify your hypothesis. If the predictions turn out to be correct then your hypothesis has been supported and may be retained until such time as some further test shows it not to be correct. Once you have arrived at your hypothesis, which is a product of your imagination, you then proceed to a strictly logical and rigorous process, based upon deductive argument —hence the term ‘hypothetico-deductive So don’t worry if you have some idea of what your results will tell you before you even begin to collect data; there are no scientists in existence who really wait until they have all the evidence in front of them before they try to work out what it might possibly mean. The closest we ever get to this situation is when something happens by accident; but even then the researcher has to formulate a hypothesis to be tested before being sure that, for example, a mould might prove to be a successful antidote to bacterial infection.
G The myth of scientific method is not only that it is inductive (which we have seen is incorrect) but also that the hypothetico-deductive method proceeds in a step-by-step, inevitable fashion. The hypothetico-deductive method describes the logical approach to much research work, but it does not describe the psychological behaviour that brings it
about. This is much more holistic —involving guesses, reworkings,
corrections, blind alleys and above all inspiration, in the deductive as well as the hypothetic component -than is immediately apparent from reading the final thesis or published papers. These have been, quite properly, organised in to a more srial, logical order so that the worth of the output may be evaluated independently of the behavioural processes by which it was obtained. It is the difference, for example between the
academic papers with which Crick and Watson demonstrated the structure of the DNA molecule and the fascinating book The Double Helix in which Watson (1968) described how they did it. From
this point of view, ‘scientific method’ may more usefully be thought of as a way of writing up research rather than as a way of carrying it out.
Exercises:
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 29-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 on the following
pages.
Questions 29-33
Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A-G.
Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs C-G from the list of headings below.
Write the appropriate numbers i-x in boxes 29-33 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i The Crick and Watson approach to
research
ii Antidotes to bacterial infection
iii The testing of hypotheses
iv Explaining the inductive method
v Anticipating results before data is
collected
vi How research is done and how it is
reported
vii The role of hypotheses in scientific
research
viii Deducing the consequences of
hypotheses
ix Karl Popper’s claim that the scientific
method is hypothetico-deductive
x The unbiased researcher
Example
Paragraph A
Answer
ix
29 Paragraph C
30 Paragraph D
31 Paragraph E
32 Paragraph F
33 Paragraph G
Questions 34 and 35
In which TWO paragraphs in Reading Passage 3 does the writer give advice directly to the reader?
Write the TWO appropriate letters (A—G) in boxes 34 and 35 on your answer sheet.
Questions 36-39
Do the following statements reflect the opinions of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 36-39 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement reflects the opinion of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the opinion of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
36 Popper says that the scientific method is hypothetico-deductive.
37 If a prediction based on a hypothesis is fulfilled, then the hypothesis is confirmed as true.
38 Many people carry out research in a mistaken way.
39 The ‘scientific method’ is more a way of describing research than a way of doing it.
Question 40
Choose the appropriate letter A-D and write it in box 40 on your answer sheet.
Which of the following statements best describes the writer’s main purpose in Reading Passage 3?
A to advise Ph.D students not to cheat while carrying out research
B to encourage Ph.D students to work by guesswork and inspiration
C to explain to Ph.D students the logic which the scientific research paper follows
D to help Ph.D students by explaining different conceptions of the research process
Comprehend the following articles and comment on the highlighted words and expressions in the texts:
Branches of science
Scientific fields are commonly divided into two major groups: natural sciences, which study natural phenomena (including biological life), and social sciences, which study human behavior and societies. These groupings are empirical sciences, which means the knowledge must be based on observable phenomena and capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions. There are also related disciplines that are grouped into interdisciplinary and applied sciences, such as engineering and medicine. Within these categories are specialized scientific fields that can include parts of other scientific disciplines but often possess their own terminology and expertise.
Mathematics, which is classified as a formal science, has both affinities and discrepancies with the empirical sciences (the natural and social sciences). It is similar to empirical sciences in that it involves an objective, careful and systematic study of an area of knowledge; it is different because of its method of verifying its knowledge, using a priori rather than empirical methods. The formal sciences, which also include statistics and logic, are vital to the empirical sciences. Major advances in formal science have often led to major advances in the empirical sciences. The formal sciences are essential in the formation of hypotheses, theories, and laws, both in discovering and depicting how things work (natural sciences) and how people think and act (social sciences).
Philosophy of science
Main article: Philosophy of science
John Locke
Philosophy of science seeks to understand the nature and justification of scientific knowledge. Since it is difficult to distinguish science from non-science, there are legitimate arguments about the boundaries between science and non-science. This is known as the problem of demarcation. There is however, a set of core precepts that have broad consensus among philosophers of science and within the scientific community on what constitutes scientific knowledge. For example, it is generally agreed that scientific hypotheses and theories must be capable of being independently tested and verified by other scientists in order to become accepted by the scientific community.
There are different schools of thought in philosophy of science. The most popular position is empiricism, which claims that knowledge is created by a process involving observation and that scientific theories are the result of generalizations from such observations. Empiricism generally encompasses inductivism, a position that tries to explain the way general theories can be justified by the finite number of observations humans can make and the hence finite amount of empirical evidence available to confirm scientific theories. This is necessary because the number of predictions those theories make is infinite, which means that they cannot be known from the finite amount of evidence using deductive logic only. Many versions of empiricism exist, with the predominant ones being the hypothetico-deductive method.
Empiricism has stood in contrast to rationalism, the position originally associated with Descartes, which holds that knowledge is created by the human intellect, not by observation. A significant twentieth century version of rationalism is critical rationalism, first defined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rejected the way that empiricism describes the connection between theory and observation. He claimed that theories are not generated by observation, but that observation is made in the light of theories and that the only way a theory can be affected by observation is when it comes in conflict with it. Popper proposed falsifiability as the landmark of scientific theories, and falsification as the empirical method to replace verifiability and induction by purely deductive notions. Popper further claimed that there is only one universal method in science, and that this method is not specific to science: The negative method of criticism, trial and error. It covers all products of the human mind, including science, mathematics, philosophy, and art. Another approach, instrumentalism, colloquially termed "shut up and calculate", emphasizes the utility of theories as instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. It claims that scientific theories are black boxes with only their input (initial conditions) and output (predictions) being relevant. Consequences, notions and logical structure of the theories are claimed to be something that should simply be ignored and that scientists shouldn't make a fuss about (see interpretations of quantum mechanics).
Finally, another approach often cited in debates of scientific skepticism against controversial movements like creationism, is methodological naturalism. Its main point is that a difference between natural and supernatural explanations should be made, and that science should be restricted methodologically to natural explanations. That the restriction is merely methodological (rather than ontological) means that science should not consider supernatural explanations itself, but should not claim them to be wrong either. Instead, supernatural explanations should be left a matter of personal belief outside the scope of science. Methodological naturalism maintains that proper science requires strict adherence to empirical study and independent verification as a process for properly developing and evaluating explanations for observable phenomena. The absence of these standards, arguments from authority, biased observational studies and other common fallacies are frequently cited by supporters of methodological naturalism as criteria for the dubious claims they criticize not to be true science.
Notes:
demarcation- разграничение
Focus on LISTENING Cambridge Preparation for the TOEFL Test
Texts for reading and discussion
Text 1 Asteroids
Quick quiz: How many planet orbits has our Sun? If you said nine, you're shy by several thousand. Scientists consider asteroids to be minor planets - some are hundreds of miles wide (and seldom round). Orbits Most, but not all, orbit the sun in an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The huge gravitational pull of Jupiter accelerated these asteroids to more than three miles per second - too fast to prevent violent collisions. Otherwise, they might have joined up to form "real" planets. When asteroids collide, fragments sometimes are sent on a collision course with Earth and become meteors. Size and makeup The vast majority of asteroids are small, compared with a large one like Ida, this 32-mile-long chunk of stone and iron that was photographed in 1993 by the Galileo spacecraft. Though we normally think of asteroids as crater-makers, they are typically pockmarked with their own impact craters. Scientists divide asteroids into two groups, based on how they appear in infrared images: light and dark. The lightest-looking asteroids are rocky bodies with lots of iron and nickel, and they resemble lunar rocks. The darkest asteroids have high quantities of hydrated minerals and carbon. In the early days of the solar system (some 4.6 billion years ago) asteroids had metallic cores, middle regions of stone and iron, and surfaces of stone. Over time, many of them collided with others and broke apart. The fragments, which became many of today's asteroids, are therefore classified as irons, stony-irons or stony. When an asteroid, or a part of it, crashes into Earth, it's called a meteorite. There are two hypotheses about how most of the asteroids formed. One says they broke off of a mother planet that existed between Mars and Jupiter. More likely, however, they represent what space was like before the planets formed, and they are the remnants of that process - bits and pieces that never quite joined together. The threat of impact Since the Earth was formed more than four billion years ago, asteroids and comets have routinely slammed into the planet. The most dangerous asteroids are extremely rare, according to NASA. An asteroid capable of global disaster would have to be more than a quarter-mile wide. Researchers have estimated that such an impact would raise enough dust into the atmosphere to effectively create a "nuclear winter," severely disrupting agriculture around the world. Asteroids that large strike Earth only once every 1,000 centuries on average, NASA officials say. Smaller asteroids that are believed to strike Earth every 1,000 to 10,000 years could destroy a city or cause devastating tsunamis. More than 160 asteroids have been classified as "potentially hazardous" by the scientists who track them. Some of these, whose orbits come close enough to Earth, could potentially be perturbed in the distant future and sent on a collision course with our planet. Scientists point out that if an asteroid is found to be on a collision course with Earth 30 or 40 years down the road, there is time to react. Though the technology would have to be developed, possibilities include exploding the object or diverting it. For every known asteroid, however, there are many that have not been spotted, and shorter reaction times could prove more threatening. NASA puts the odds at 1 in 10,000 of discovering an asteroid that is within 10 years of impact. Two programs have been set up to actively search for Near-Earth Objects (NEO's): NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program, and Spacewatch at the University of Arizona. Also, the Spaceguard Foundation was established in 1996 in Rome. The international organization's goal is to protect Earth from the impacts by promoting and coordinating discovery programs and studies of NEOs. A January report shows that NEOs 1 kilometer or larger are being discovered at the rate of about five a month. The combined goal of these agencies is to find 90 percent of all NEOs 1 kilometer or larger within the next decade.
Text 2 Comets
Made of dust, ice, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane, comets resemble dirty snowballs. You may remember them as blurry smudges in the sky. Comets orbit the Sun, but most are believed to inhabit in an area known as the Oort Cloud, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Occasionally a comet streaks through the inner solar system; some do so regularly, some only once every few centuries. Heads and tails As a comet nears the Sun, its icy core boils off, forming a cloud of dust and gas called a head, or coma. Comets become visible when sunlight reflects off this cloud. As the comet gets closer to the sun, more gas is produced. The gas and dust is pushed away by charged particles known as the solar wind, forming two tails. Dust particles form a yellowish tail, and ionized gas makes a bluish ion tail. A comet's tails, like these on comet Halley, always points away from the Sun. Meteor showers When Earth crosses the path of a comet, even if the comet hasn't been around for a few years, leftover dust and ice can create increased numbers of meteors.
Text 3 It is science that does us good or does it bring disaster
To answer the question whether science does us good or does it bring disaster isn't a simple task. We should take into consideration many facts. On the one hand a lot of outstanding discoveries made the life of the people more comfortable and pleasant. Without scientific discoveries and inventions no progress would be possible. Thanks to discovery of electricity we can listen to the radio, watch TV, see films, people learned how to produce steel and metal alloys - now we use railways and airplanes. Development of chemistry led to new synthetic fibers and people got more clothing and food. People learned to use scientific achievements in curing incurable earlier diseases. But on the other hand such outstanding discoveries of the 20th century as atom fission led to creation of the weapons of mass destruction. We should say that science has a potential for both good and evil. Alfred Nobel invented a new explosive (dynamite) to improve the peacetime industries of road building, but saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and injure his fellow men. He was born in Stockholm on October 21st 1833, but moved to Russia with his parents in1842. Most of the family returned to Sweden in 1859, where Alfred began his own study of explosives in his father's laboratory. He had never been to school or university, but had studied privately and by the time he was 20 was a skillful chemist and excellent linguist, speaking Russian, English, German, French and Swedish. He was very imaginative and inventive. His greatest wish, however, was to see an end to wars, and thus between nations, and he spent much time and money working for this cause, until his death in 1896. His famous will in which he left money to provide prizes for outstanding discoveries in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Literature and Peace, is a memorial to his interests and ideals. Medical men use laser to cure and investigate diseases and the same time laser can be used for destruction. Achievements of biology and chemistry are also used to cause damage to people. All this shows that science can take good forms and evil forms. What form does it take depends on the way people work with science. It is impossible to stop progress, to stop people to investigate and explore the world. But people should care it wouldn't be led in wrong direction. Scientists need you thinking in a new much broader way than before. In this respect the education and cultural level are of great importance. They have to influence politicians, warn them of possible effects of using new discoveries. Scientists and politicians think that it's their responsibility for not using scientific developments to cause damage and destruction. There is a lot of work to be done in this direction.
Text 4 Science
Science is a source of progress. It develops the world we live in. Our century is an epoch of great discoveries in science and engineering. It is epoch of scientific and technological revolution, when new ideas are being born and new discoveries, inventions are being made at an ever increasing rate. Today science has become the most important factor in the development of national economy in the whole world. Scientific progress serves the interests of society, helps to increase the well - being of people and develops public education. Computer technology plays the most important role in the progress of science. The ability of computers to solve many mathematical problems more effective than man does, has given rise to new trends in mathematics. Computer science is a new field of study and research. In recent years scientists of the world have achieved great success in the development of physics, chemistry, biology, and such astonishing, interesting science as psychology. But science may be turned both for peace and military purpose. It can take good forms and evil forms. With the help of scientific inventions politicians make weapons of mass destruction. But on the other hand researches help us in our life: at home, at work, at school and make the level of the country development higher. That's why there are a lot's of facts telling about a great amount of well-known scientists who had burned their works when they've understood the consequences of their inventions. There are a lot of world-known scientists but one of the greatest names in history of man's work in physics. James Clerk Maxwell was born Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1831.After school he entered the University of native city, attended the University of Cambridge which he graduated in 1854. For two years he lectured, made experiments in optics at Trinity College, studied much himself. In 1856 he became a professor of natural philosophy and in 1860 - a professor of physics and astronomy at kings College in London. In London he lived for five years. There he saw Faraday. In 1871 Maxwell became a professor of experimental physics at Cambridge. At that time students couldn't even have such subjects like electricity and magnetism, as there was no laboratory for the study of these subjects. Maxwell organized such a laboratory, which made Cambridge world-known. This was a fruitful period of Maxwell's life. He studied the problems of electromagnetism, molecular physics, optics, and mechanics. Maxwell wrote his first scientific work when he was 15. Science that time he wrote a great number of works which were the results of his experiments and calculations. His most outstanding investigations are in the field of kinetic theory of gases and electricity. Maxwell is the founder of the electromagnetic field (side by side with Faraday). In 1873 he published his work on electricity and magnetism. During these years he also wrote his classic "Matter and Motion", "Atoms", "Attraction", "Faraday". Maxwell died in 1879.
Text 5 The achievement of science and technical revolution and our day-to-day life
As the years go forward our life becomes faster, a lot of new things appear, our mind develops and it cannot stop. It's like a strong river which never ends to run and it is rapidly spreading all over the earth. Many centuries ago people even couldn't imagine that we will be able to exchange information using telephone, fax, Internet as long as they couldn't think that there are a lot of planets except our earth and that people can fly their. If we think how had everything developed, how many new things had appeared and how had the minds of people become so wide we even won't be able to understand it because nowadays we cannot imagine our life without such inventions like lamps, ovens, central heating and others. During the centuries people have been invented the things to make our life easier. A great invention such as transport plays one of the most important roles in our life. We live in flats, can appear in different point of earth within a day, can say hello to people who live in another point of the world. All those things are a product of technical progress and it doesn't stop to grow and develop. Nowadays we live surrounded by machines and other inventions. And with new inventions we become happier because nearly everything is making by machine not by ourselves. And from day to day appear more and more new things. And we don't think about how the first inventions were created. The only thing we know that we never will return to the life which people lived a lot of centuries ago because there is no way back. Everything is handy. We use at home vacuum cleaners to clean the flat, ovens to cook, lifts to walk down in our houses, lamps to make our flats light…. There are a lot of such things like this, and we even don't think about when and where and who invented it. And it's so simple to us. And it's so dear to us that we cannot even live without it. Our century is a century of developing informational connection. Faxes, TV, Internet, and Telephone became the most popular way of getting and sending information. One of the greatest inventions of the century, in my opinion is computer. It's the coup in the technology. When Charles Babbage (1792-1871), a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University invented the first calculating machine in 1812 he could hardly have imagined the situation we find ourselves today. Computer becomes like a brain of human but the only thing it cannot do is to feel. The other things are easy to it. As everything computers also develop. The possibilities of it are so wide. It can do more than 500000 sums in a fraction of a second. Programming became one of the most useful and popular profession. Nowadays computers can pay wages, reserve seats on planes, control sputniks, compose music. Also everybody knows the words Cd Rom, a means of storing information on a disk to be read by a computer, e-mail, which becomes one of the ways to exchange information, the Internet - a network that is a way to get information, to communicate with people, to find everything you need. More and more people become Internet users because we can do so many things their and also cannot say all of them. You can chat there, find job, pay bills, get music, buy something, find referats, and know the latest news exchange information with other people in each point of earth by e-mail and a lot of other functions. As for me it became a usual thing to be connected to Internet. It attracts me by a wide variety of different kinds of information which is necessary to people. Of coarse I use a lot of other things of technology at home. And I think that the main point of such inventions as vacuum cleaners, which we use at home, radio, TV set, mixers, refrigerators, one of the most important thing in every flat all these were invented only after the invention of electricity. So I find the question about technical progress very wide and it's impossible to say about all inventions. And in conclusion I want to say that the technical progress won't stop and the machines will substitute everything except one the human.
Focus on GRAMMAR