ScientificAttitudes科学态度(自考UNIT10重点课文建议背诵).doc

Scientific AttitudesScience had its beginning when man started asking questions about his environment.He wondered where the sun went at night and why the sky was blue.He questioned why the wind blew and the leaves fell.He sought answers to these and other questions.Not all his answers were correct,but at least he did want to know. Curiosity and ImaginationScience began to develop rapidly when man laid aside his wrong beliefs and began to seek true explanations.Young children are curious about how things work.The child wants to take apart a watch to see what makes it work.Benjamin Franklin wondered about lightning.He combined his curiosity with imagination and carried out his well-known experiment to show that lightning and an electric spark are the same thing.Curiosity and imagination are important qualities which help stimulate the discovery of new facts and advance science.Belief in Cause and EffectScientifically minded people believe in a “cause-and-effect” relationship.They feel there is a perfectly natural explanation for everything.For example,there is a good reason why some leaves turn red and others yellow in the fall.Changes such as these,which are easily observed,are called phanomena.Some common phenomena,however,are not completely understood.Still others cannot be explained at all at this time.In cases where the explanation is unknown the scientific point of view is that there is a reason if it can only be discovered.Being Open-MindedOpen-mindedness is also extremely important to a scientific attitude.This means the ability to face the facts as they are regardless of what one has previously thought.It includes an ability to accept new and sometimes even disagreeable ideas.The worker in science must face facts whether they are pleasant or unpleasant .He must expect many failures and be willing to try again.Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before he succeeded in producing the first electric lamp.The solutions to real problems cannot be seen in advance.Scientists must be able to change their thinking and to adapt their theories to new facts as they are discovered.The mind cannot be made up once and for all.New knowledge may make a change in thinking necessary.This is another way of saying that man’s understanding is always less than perfect.What is accepted as true often is relatively and not absolutely,true.A scientific truth offers an explanation that is acceptable only in the light of what is known at a particular time.Respect for the Views of OthersAnother part of a scientific attitude is respect for the views of others.This is easy when these views are like one’s own.The difficulty comes up when their ideas are different.Views which are entirely new or foreign may also be hard to accept.New ideas are frequently very slow to be accepted.Scientists such as Galileo,Louis Pasteur,and Edward Jenner were laughed at because they held theories that were not accepted.Respect for new ideas is important for continued progress in all fields of knowledge.Opinions Based on EvidenceSonetimes evidence is not complete.It may take time for new facts to become available.When they are available,a person may have to change his mind.New findings may also require a “wait-and-see” attitude.For example,there is an experiment on the sprouting of seeds which has been running for more than 50 years.The purpose is to determine how long a time seeds can be buride in the ground and still grow when proper conditions for growth exist.。