09 NOV 2015 by ideonexus

 Video Games Require the Scientific Method

Video games aren’t as easy as they seem to the uninitiated. One cannot simply sit down and immediately begin shooting those aliens. One must first learn how to play the game. Gee (2003) suggests that skilled players learn to play using a four-step probing process (p. 90): 1. The player must probe the virtual world by looking around the current environment, clicking on something, or engaging in a certain action. 2. On the basis of the probing results, the player must form a hypothesis abou...
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18 APR 2014 by ideonexus

 Early Statement on the Scientific Method

The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration and not the sayings of human beings whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to...
Folksonomies: science scientific method
Folksonomies: science scientific method
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From Alhazen.

24 FEB 2014 by ideonexus

 MMO Players Use the Scientific Process

In MMOs, individuals collaborate to solve complex problems within the virtual world, such as figuring out what combination of individual skills, proficiencies, and equipment are necessary to conquer an in-game boss dragon in the example above. As part of developing efficient and effective solutions, players are customarily expected to research various game strategies and tactics by consulting on- and offline manuals, databases, and discussions, as well as by using such knowledge as the basis ...
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They hypothesize, collaborate, experiment and test their ideas in the virtual worlds to learn how they work.

22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus

 Ask Nature Many Questions at Once

No aphorism is more frequently repeated . . . than that we must ask Nature few questions, or ideally, one question at a time. The writer is convinced that this view is wholly mistaken. Nature, he suggests, will best respond to a logically and carefully thought out questionnaire; indeed if we ask her a single question, she will often refuse to answer until some other topic has been discussed.
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Against the common wisdom of asking one question at a time.

22 JAN 2014 by ideonexus

 The Three Principal Means of Investigation

We have three principal means: observation of nature, reflection, and experiment. Observation gathers the facts, reflection combines them, experiment verifies the result of the combination. It is essential that the observation of nature be assiduous, that reflection be profound, and that experimentation be exact. Rarely does one see these abilities in combination. And so, creative geniuses are not common.
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Each is a virtue, and strength in all three is rare.

21 JAN 2014 by ideonexus

 Science Does Not Require Talent

Anyone of common mental and physical health can practise scientific research .... Anyone can try by patient experiment what happens if this or that substance be mixed in this or that proportion with some other under this or that condition. Anyone can vary the experiment in any number of ways. He that hits in this fashion on something novel and of use will have fame .... The fame will be the product of luck and industry. It will not be the product of special talent.
Folksonomies: scientific method process
Folksonomies: scientific method process
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It is a simple process of thoroughness, any discoveries are just luck.

15 NOV 2013 by ideonexus

 The World is a Black Box

The world with its quarks and chromosomes, its distant lands and spiral nebulae, is like a vast computer in a black box, forever sealed except for its input and output registers. These we directly observe, and in the light of them we speculate on the structure of the machine, the universe. Thus it is that we think up the quarks and chromosomes, the distant lands and the nebulae; they would account for the observable data. When an observation turns out unexpectedly, we may try modifying our th...
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We don't know how it works, we only see the inputs and outputs and must extrapolate hypotheses from what we see.

15 NOV 2013 by ideonexus

 Observations are Grounded in Language

What are observations? Some philosophers have taken them to be sensory events: the occurrence of smells, feels, noises, color patches. This way lies frustration. What we ordinarily notice and testify to are rather the objects and events out in the world. It is to these that our very language is geared, because language is a social institution, learned from other people who share the scene to which the words refer. Observation sentences, like theoretical sentences, are for the most part senten...
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Not senses.

08 OCT 2013 by ideonexus

 The Primitive Scientific Mind

There is no sort of savage so low as not to have a kind of science of cause and effect. But primitive man was not very critical in his associations of cause with effect; he very easily connected an effect with something quite wrong as its cause. “You do so and so,” he said, “and so and so happens.” You give a child a poisonous berry and it dies. You eat the heart of a valiant enemy and you become strong. There we have two bits of cause and effect association, one true one false. We ca...
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It was concerned with cause and effect, but established many wrong connections.

13 APR 2013 by ideonexus

 Bayes' Theorem Means Scientific Consensus Should Converge

One property of Bayes’s theorem, in fact, is that our beliefs should converge toward one another—and toward the truth—as we are presented with more evidence over time. In figure 8-8, I’ve worked out an example wherein three investors are trying to determine whether they are in a bull market or a bear market. They start out with very different beliefs about this—one of them is optimistic, and believes there’s a 90 percent chance of a bull market from the outset, while another one i...
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As more and more tests are carried out, scientific opinions should converge around the truth.