Test Bank For Methods Toward a Science of Behavior and Experience 10th Edition by William J. Ray

Chapter 1 – What is Science?

Chapter Outline

Science as a Way of Knowing

Tenacity

Authority

Reason

Common Sense

Science

Pseudoscience and Superstition

The Scientific Approach

Early Approaches

Overview

Studying Behavior and Experience

Behavior: A Road Into the Subjective Experience of Research Participants

The People Who Perform Science

Chapter Overview

Knowledge about the world is gathered in several ways. In tenacity, a belief is accepted because it is presented over and over again. Authority is a way of knowing in which we accept an idea because an authority figure tells us to. Knowledge can be acquired through reason and logic. Direct experience serves as the basis of common sense, which can lead to knowledge. Each possesses shortcomings.

In contrast to these three, science relies upon the scientific method that allows for the self-correction of ideas. The examples of Croesus, Galen, and Semmelweis provide historical insight into the development of science. Science verifies itself because of its empirical nature whether one is studying at the cognitive, physiological, or behavioral level. In investigating the subjective experience of subjects, science must rely upon making inferences from what is directly observable and objective. Above all, science is a human activity conducted by people and communicated to people.

Chapter Objectives

1. What roles do the scientist, research participant, and witness play in science?

2. Compare and contrast the different methods of knowing: tenacity, authority, reason, common sense, and science.

3. How did Galileo advance our thinking from authority to empiricism?
4. What is pseudoscience and why does it often influence people’s beliefs?

5. What important strides did Croesus, Galen, and Semmelweis make? How have we advanced in our contemporary scientific approach?
6. What are the major characteristics of the scientific approach?

7. Why are scientific conclusions never considered final?

8. What is the importance of replication in science? How is replication part of the feedback component in science?

9. Explain how the scientific method’s feedback component refines ideas.

10. What are Newton’s Rules of Reasoning (1680) and how are they still utilized today by scientists?

11. How does the concept of empiricism relate to our study of behavior and experience?

12. Summarize Schumacher’s four ways of studying psychological processes.

13. How is psychology like other sciences in its reliance on objective observation to study indirectly unobservable phenomena?