[+amgD] Remember when I mentioned once that I mentioned that back when I was in Grade 11 chem that I pointed out (this was when someone asked Mr. Wade WHY do we have to learn like the Rutherford atom, the Bohr Atom, the quantum model, etc., when each of them turns out to be wrong--of course, theyre still valuable as stepping stones and didactic tools that also show how science operates and how empirical research can only hold that a model matches observation to a point within relevant episteme!) science itself is an iterative process--actually, many of us still think it to be a set of areas of knowledge or topics, but really, science refers only to the structured method of inquiry that is itself incremental and iterative. In this case, if you really know a thing and youre confident, then you will first suspect you might have made an error along the way. Then, having checked your m*th, youll have no problem indicating the error publicly being open to the possibility of having made an error you didnt catch, but at least certain youve applied the correct theoretical concept correctly, with only mechanical human error (is that a witty oxymoron or what?) remaining as possibility (including error in mechanically adapting a concept, of course..) So, remember, scientists ought not expect to get it right at any given time except End of Times, of course, but otherwise, we are not aiming to be right, but rather, to head in the direction of right, which so many scientists allow Pride to confound. In this case, you just learned the value of self-examining and the application of what I think of in my learning process as a two-phase, oppositely-directed process, first of Inductive Reasoning/Critical Thinking, when one learns/probes at/ characterizes/understands/internalizes/groks the conceptual Essence of a thing (often through a Top-Down, holo-descriptive approach of Abstraction, which, of course you will understand to be distinct from abstraction of an electron but thats organic chem...) like looking from the top down at a map. This is not the time to form hypotheses/allow preconceptions/what you dont know to enter into the equation anywhere... Then the second phase is oppositely directed and corresponds to applying what you abstracted/gleaned/induced and, in the case of quantitative hypothetico-deductive reasearch, form a hypothesis through deduction and then test it to what you see, first in the same type of cases (this is determined by the relevant episteme that should be PRE-determined before beginning any of this otherwise youll end up with the Research Design methodological equivalent to Rationalization in psychology and just keep changing ontological or epistemological bases to suit what you want to see--which is a totally different animal to what Ponds and Fleischman sank to in 1990 with their fake cold fusion....) This process is the one by which you ought have identified the error in the textbook, which you see as being much more valuable, in fact, than a regular question that you can just look at the solutions--once I tell you that the derivative, for example, of x squared (X^2) is 2x, you wont credibly consider 2+x or -2x+(1/2)y, for example--or if I told my daughter that 1+1 = 2, she already is shown a direction and no longer can discover truly considering it might be -2 or blue so that actually is a most valuable type of Learning Resource!
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 04:55:22 +0000
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