Intro to Science in KI, 13/7/09

For today, we had a "lecture" which is a basic introduction of scientific knowledge and its history.

First, we discussed what is science. It was concluded as the study of "physical" phenomena. However, when the idea of scienctific knowledge was brought up, another discussion was brought up and was left off asknowledge gained about physical phenomena although the idea of scientific knowledge being knowledge constructed by the "scientific method"(hypothesis... experiment ...etc..) was brought up.

Now on to the history of science. Todays "lecture" mainly delt with western science. The father of modern science is often seen as Aristotle who claims scientific knowledge comes from observing natural phenomena and proposed that everything has a cause and effect, an assumption made by most when doing scientific research.

Then the first class of science was discussed, astronomy. People started looking to the skies before looking at the world around them(stange indeed). From here, the Ptolemaic system was brought up. It is the concept of the solar system with earth being at its centre and the sun and moon revolving around it as well as the universe being encompassed by a shell with stars being embeded in it. Then the system suggested by Nocholas Copernicus and supported by Galileo Galilei was made. It puts the sun at the centre of the solar system but still has the universe as something finite. Then came the modern understanding which puts the universe as infinite as well as the sun at the centre of the solar system. This shows how science has been in constant progress.

This led to Thomas Kuhn suggesting that science is made of paradigms which are shaken as time goes on for it to progress as all the previous advancements shook the scientific world in their time.

Another example of how science progress through time is the view on time and space. From
Isaac Newton's view of a clockwork universe where everything has absolute phenomena and causes and effects to Einsteins's Theory of Relativity which puts everything in space and time as relative to Quantem Physics which I don't really understand.

So essentially today was one big introduction. Not much notes execpt background knowledge and trivia for ones interest. Hope this helped.