Demarcation and Cooper’s Aims of Science

Demarcation and Cooper’s Aims of Science

Science education is a vital building block in the process of acquiring knowledge by a child. The inborn curiosity and desire to understand causes a child to be very inquisitive where they have exposure to new things and the environment. Children share some common characteristics with the real scientists. A scientist will seek to understand and explore new facts and theories that govern the world. A child will also find out and question why things are the way they are thus borrowing some traits that are common with the scientists. This is contrary to how high school students perceive science education. The students are not inquisitive and do not desire to comprehend concepts. The aim of cramming information and concepts instead of understanding the concepts. Memorizing concepts is what the high school students do in their attempt to apply the version of the scientific method. Memorizing of chunks of concepts greatly kills the creativity of the students. I would argue that the transformation of the scientific method by encouraging the practical application of knowledge would yield better results in the scientific system of education. The adjustment to be made on the methods of scientific knowledge be dependent on two philosophical inquiry which includes, cooper’s aims of science and demarcation.

By having the awareness of the information that negates theories and experiments is essential to instill at a tender age of children to do away with the confirmation bias that is very dominant in society. Teaching the students methods of learning resulting from being inquisitive and receiving facts that surpass individual non-falsifiable beliefs that give us smart people.       Science results in knowledge, however, when the questions are not examined and investigated well, the data that is collected and the research conducted will result in inaccurate information. The foundation of science is the scientifical method. A method that is used to teach scientific knowledge to the child will determine how the child will grab the scientific knowledge. This scientific knowledge is simplified so that the child can understand it. As the child progresses to middle school to high school, the terminologies get tougher although the steps are the same (Benessia et al., 2016). The teachers introduce the learners to the notion of observation by inquiring from them some information. A teacher can ask the learner, ‘’ what do you aspire to know about the world around you” The student undergoes some transformation as they advance to higher levels of education. The learner here apply the scientific methods in their environment.

When the student graduates from a college they pursue science and conducts experiments with a motive of making money as opposed to developing scientific knowledge. The students present the data that highlights all the strengths they require. The students are taught the scientific method when they are of a tender age. Simple terminologies are applied to teach them for them to comprehend the information that is conveyed. In contemporary society, the schools teach the scientific methods that entail a series of five, six or seven steps that are dependent on the way the information is compressed by the teachers (Badenhorst,  & Steininger, 2019). The primal step entails observation, where the student has to observe so as to comprehend the concept. The second step involves inquiry, the third consists of the formation of a hypothesis, the fourth entails the test of the hypothesis, the fifth involves the collection of data, the sixth steps are the analysis and lastly, a conclusion is drawn. I promise that another step should be added to this method. Addition of these steps which should come after the hypothesis and before the step where the experiment is carried out.  This step should be called the ‘’Aim of science.’’  Neil Cooper presents us with the idea about the urge to comprehend and persevere in our environment. He also writes about how to interact in the environment that we occupy (McCahey & Cole, 2015)’’ We want to acquire knowledge in to predict what will happen, and we want to predict, and we want to predict to control o9ur environment, to know what to do” However, without a definite aim to what the target is, the learner can encounter movement of the methods but without the possession of a definite aim it is hard for the learner to find out the proper set up for the experiment.

We can examine an example of a classroom setup. In a classroom students will be expected to use a scientific method to provide an answer to this question: ‘’ Can a seed germinate into a plant in meager or no sunlight?’’ Most students will predict that the seed will germinate right in the experiment. This will result from the students’ experience with seeds that have germinated in places with no or less sunlight. The students then go to experiment with this frame of mind to supports the hypothesis that the seeds can germinate in the absence of sunlight (Grover et al., 2016). They neglect the other factors that prevent the growth of plants under these conditions. This is a classic representation of the confirmation bias where the students are more willing to prove their predictions right thus they give the data that supports what they already know. Strengthens.

The students are educated about placing an aim will resemble ‘’I predict that the plant will germinate with little or no sunlight and the sole aim of the experiment would be to examine factors that affect photosynthesis’’ This will reduce the risks associated with confirmation bias since before the experiment the student is not focused on proving his expectations to be right. In a situation where the students are not taught to set their aims before conducting an experiment and waiting until the analysis of the data. Incorporation of this step will make the students possess more scientific attitude

In conclusion, training the students at a young age enables them to reduce confirmation bias. The students should be taught the scientific methods and the application of that knowledge in the practical world. They should continue developing the desire to question nature thus exploring the world like a scientist. The addition of Cooper’s aims of science may prove to have beneficial impacts on the knowledge of the child. Mere memorization of facts and theories as the student advances in high school may prove to be one of the worst methods of gaining scientific knowledge. The desire to understand nature by being inquisitive is the best way to develop scientific knowledge.