EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E 
Emergence of Life
Bruce W. Fouke, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
https://www.coursera.org/course/emergenceoflife
C O U R S E   L E C T U R E 
Philosophical Benchmarks in Science
Notes taken on August 8, 2014 by Edward Tanguay
what does science provide us?
Socrates (470BC-399BC)
one of the great heroes of scientific endeavor
society was hierarchical
Socrates employed critical free thought to this hierarchical society and its ideas
use reason and discuss
dialectical method
learning through disciplined, rigorous, and thoughtful dialogue and logically defending one's ideas during intensive questioning
the step forward for accuracy in understanding the natural world
Aristotle (384BC-322BC)
did a lot of hiking in the mountains throughout Greece
found marine fossils high in mountains
philosophized about their origin
in this sense he was an early paleontologist, someone who studies life through geologic time based on the principle of geology and biology
assumptions and evidence were important to him: what are your theories assuming and what evidence do you have to support your claims?
what kind of predictions are you making and how are they testable?
analogy identifies anomaly
analogy: we as humans have an experiential base which we bring to anything we are a part of
if we see something new, the first thing we do is compare it to something else we have experienced before
anomaly: those areas where our analogy does not fit completely to the phenomena being observed
it is exactly these things that become interesting, concerning, or startling about what is being observed, and something that should be identified as a topic of further investigation
René Descartes (1596-1650)
French philosopher and mathematician who spent most of his life in the Dutch Republic
1637 book: Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
carefully and accurately using critical reasoning and our senses, we can acquire knowledge about the natural world and build a foundation to acquire more knowledge
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996)
1962 book: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
one of the natures of science is that it is done by humans within society
some of the most important developments in science have been accompanied by pain, struggle, and rejection
those scientific discoveries that have been shunned by society which were also based in reproducibility and testable predictions, have generally prevailed