Scientific Methods – Inductive & Deductive Reasoning, Hypothetico-deductive Approach

To start the lecture of, we first discussed both the nature of science and the nature of technology, my takeaway from the discussion was that science has to do with the natural world and has a more understanding approach rather than technology, which deals with the man-made world and adopts a more application approach. There was an activity that the class did which dealt with our eyes, mind and perception, a couple of pictures were shown which had two different images and everyone was asked what they say within the pictures. For myself, the hardest one was with the lady with the white cover over her head because it took me a couple of minutes to really see the other hidden image. After the activity, we discussed what observation is vs perception, learning that things can mean much more than what you thought you saw, people have different perceptions and may think something different from you or another person.

Doing my own work at home, I further began to understand this point whilst I was scrolling through social media and saw a picture with a color-blind person, only to realize that these people have been born without the skill to recognize colors like other people would. Moving on in the lecture, we then investigated the three different types of scientific methods which may have been used by scientists in their times, these are; the inductive approach, deductive approach and the hypothetico-deductive approach. I learned that induction is a type of valid reasoning hence it begins with observations, once a specific pattern is observed, a hypothesis can be derived and then a theory can be developed. An example I remembered from in class was the one with the swans, stating that all swans are right, which has been derived based on an inductive method, then comes along a black swan which falsified the whole theory of all swans are white. This example led to a major disadvantage of induction because theories based on this type can be proven false at any time. Then we moved on to deductive reasoning, which is based on a premise, a premise is a statement which provides support for the conclusion. Deductive reasoning is the opposite of inductive, simply because, you must first design a testable hypothesis, and then observe the results via experimentation.

We then moved on to the much more reliable and most beneficial approach, which is the hypothetico-deductive method. This method is regarded as the only ‘true’ scientific research method, this includes, the deductive approach, and then testing this theory, by trying to falsify it, and afterward investigating the outcomes for consistency and then accept or reject the hypothesis based on the results.

This lecture has been beneficial to myself in this course as it widens my learning, it was much more work than I thought but it didn’t deter me from going home and doing my work prior to what I didn’t understand in the beginning of the class. I would now keep in mind that perspectives can change based on the understanding on the situation and will continue to do work and learn in this course.