PHS 100A
Warner Pacific
College
January 4, 2012
The Scientific Method
and Western Culture
The
environment’s well-being is the responsibility of each one of us, to ensure the
survival of our race as a whole.
In recent years, we all have heard through several media outlets such as
television, radio, and magazines the impacts of our actions have over our
environment and the effects that could have in our future. A great advocate for the environment is
the former Vice-President, Al Gore.
Throughout his movie, “The Inconvenience
Truth”, Al Gore touched on a variety of topics regarding our actions and
the effects of those actions regarding the environment. The main focus of Al Gore’s movie was
global warming. The scientific
society was involved in a series of investigations on the issue of
environment. The process used by those
scientists to determine the effects of our actions to the environment is called
the scientific method.
“The Scientific Method
is a logical and rational order of steps by which scientists come to
conclusions about the world around them.” (Science Made Simple, 2006 - 2011).
The
science community uses the scientific method to confirm the answers obtained by
their researches and studies. The
scientific method is a process to aid the user and to obtain answers to
questions using a step by step format.
Steps such as observations, hypothesis, predictions, experimentations,
and finally the conclusions are the core of the scientific method. During the observation step, the scientists
will research everything that is to know about the question or subject to be
studied. Using diverse sources of information
will help the research and the experiment to be good in general. The second step is creating
hypotheses. Scientists will declare
a statement that outlines the outcome of their experimentation. Hypothesis helps scientist express a
research or study in a form of a question. The following step is predictions. During this step, a scientist gives a detailed demonstration
about the truthiness of their hypothesis.
The experiment that scientist will conduct is to exam their
predictions. Having a wrong prediction
indicates that new details about the experiment were brought out and to be
taken into consideration. The
fourth step is the experimentation.
In this step, scientists will test their hypothesis with physical
experiments. Experiments are the instrument
used by scientist to find out if their thoughts or ideas were right or wrong. Experiments are an important part to
the scientific method because it will test the hypothesis. Finally, the conclusion will express
the experiment's results, and their relationship with the hypothesis. In the conclusion, the scientist has
the choice to support or disapprove their hypothesis.
“Western culture is a
body of knowledge derived from reason” (Western Culture Global, 2009).
In
United States we enjoy certain rights and liberties that allow us to enjoy our
lifestyles to the fullest. Our
western culture style of living has given us a place in this planet in which a large
amount of people around the world would like to be part of. Western culture is the direct
result of a society obtaining knowledge from reasoning and understanding. This way
of thinking helps societies such as ours to understand matters related
to nature, including human behavior.
Western culture allows our individualism way of reasoning from subject
to subject. This type of culture
also allows us as individuals to achieve our own happiness. Another attribute of western culture is
the protection of individual’s rights without sacrificing another individual’s
rights. Lastly, in western culture
individuals have the opportunity to obtain personal wealth promoting a
capitalism style of society.
The
progress of our western culture is not to reasoning and understanding
along. The scientific method is
also responsible for the progress of the western culture. The scientific method and western
culture has gone hand in hand helping each other through the years. Without the freedom of reasoning that
western culture provides, we could not have scientific method. Without scientific method we could not
have the advances in our western culture.
The great discoveries and inventions in technologies and science is due
to certain individuals who know the reasons and why’s of things. The price we had paid for some of those
advantages in our culture includes damages to our environment. The growth in our population made for an
increase in the housing industries, using part of our logging industries and taking
part of our natural lands. In these
types of cases, the scientific method is a great tool to measure how much damage we have made to our environment.
In
conclusion, we all are responsible for our environment. The advantages western culture allows
are a great privilege, not a right.
We are responsible for not destroying our surroundings for a little
space that we really do not need.
We all should look the environment as an investment not only for us, but
for our future generations.
References
Science Made Simple. (2006 - 2011). Understanding
and Using the Scientific Method. Retrieved December 29, 2011, from
www.sciencemadesimple.com:
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/scientific_method.html
Western Culture Global. (2009). What is Western
Culture? Retrieved December 29, 2011, from www.westerncultureglobal.org:
http://www.westerncultureglobal.org/what-is-western-culture.html#
Withgott, J., & Brennan, S. (2011). Environment:
The Science Behind The Stories. San Francisco: Pearson Benjamin Cummings.
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