Facts, laws, theories, and hypotheses OHMY!

1. All four ways of knowing are valid and appropriate in certain situations. Briefly describe a situation that is appropriate for each way of knowing.
• Authority- is when you trust, or believe someone that is the leading expert or specialist on a given topic or subject. Therefore providing a type of given authority in a certain kind of information. An example of this with in my own life can be seen within my martial art instructor, she has been teaching and instructing for over 10 years and has earned the respect and authority within her given art. I can then relay on her knowledge and expertise to teach me.
• Revelation- is when someone receives knowledge, guidance, or information from a being or god from within their faith or beliefs, An example of this within my life is my belief in the New Testament written in the pages of my God inspired bible.
• Logic- is when a person uses the fact in front of them to systematically, break down information into usable understandings or explanations. Though you must note the logic does not carry any reference to the real world. An example of this in my life could be thinking that all sport cars go fast, and saying a car that just not go fast and making the declaration that that car must not be a sports car.
• Science- is when you apply logic, speculation, and facts to the real world. This process many times allows you to eliminate different aspects of your knowledge and build on the most proven facts and truths within a given situation. Science is the by far one of the most refined ways of knowing, but yields a much more powerful, trust worthy outcome. An example of this could be stating the ice is not water, but then subjecting it to different tests and finding it is in fact a different from of water.
2. Distinguish between hypotheses and theories.
Hypotheses- are formed to present a relationship or correlation between things. I once hear them described as very education guesses. A hypothesis is in many ways the starting place for future fact, laws and theories.
Theories- are studies/explanations about the natural world that have been exhaustively studied and many times include and relay on laws, well tested hypothesis, facts, and other influential studies. It many times takes a great deal of work to reach the theory stage within the scientific community.
3. Go back to a previous reading you had in this course. Which hypotheses did you discuss while answering your discussion questions? What theory (ies) did you test?”
Two hypotheses that were focused on within our studies are:
1) Found within the activity for work done on Price and Partner’s case study, If everyone from my high school was to ride the bus instead of drive their own cars, our carbon foot print as a whole would be much less. It tested the CO2 output for all the cars in my school districts high school students, as well as all the CO2 output from the bus it would take to bring them to and from school every day, in the hopes of proving that a bus would be better for the environment then everyone driving their own cars.
2) The second main hypothesis that comes to mind was our most resent hypothesis that stated something along the lines of our human skulls had evolved over time from a chimp like ancestor. The point of this hypothesis was to get us looking at how similar and how different our skulls are to that of chimpanzee and to see if we the homo-sapiens did in fact form from the same lineage of chimps and just change course along the way.