Tok Essay
5. What is it about theories in the human sciences and natural sciences that makes them convincing? Man has always struggled to understand the world around him and, as a result, has relied heavily on the sciences. The sciences first became popular in the Greco-Roman era and from then have continued to develop and ultimately diverge into two separate subjects, human and natural sciences. Each of these has further diverges in which there can be up to fifty categories within each subject. However, despite the fact that there are numerous categories within the sciences, the two are able to remain related through their many convincing theories; all of which seek to explain the world around us. Theories are, by definition, an idea or assertion that is descriptive, explanatory, and/or predictive in nature (“What is it About Theories”). That being said, theories are built around prior knowledge and evidence that corresponds to what we already hold as true. Furthermore, theories are able to be falsified which can result in two issues with knowledge, past experience interference and bias. The question now is why are theories in the sciences so convincing as opposed to theories in other realms of knowledge? To answer this question it is vital to define a convincing theory. For the purposes of this paper, a convincing theory is one that has surpassed most criticism and is widely accepted. To begin, it is impossible for a null hypothesis to be rejected and thus it is impossible to prove a theory. This is because the probability that a difference is exactly zero is not possible; there is always a chance of an alternate outcome. Despite this, many theories are made convincing enough that they are just accepted. For example, we do not question whether a ball thrown up will always come down, or whether plants gain energy from the sun. Instead, these theories are regarded as true. Why ? One explanation is that reasoning is the primary way of knowing and is also considered
Cited: "What is it about theories in the human sciences and natural ..." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2012 http://mytokessay.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/what-is-it-about-theories-in-the-human-sciences-and-natural-sciences-that-makes-them-convincing-2/. "Rutherford Experiment Ppt Presentation - PowerPoint ..." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2012 . "Alzheimer 's disease neuropathology - stages :: DNA Learning ..." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2012 .