AoK2 : Natural Sciences - Jason Herrera

"Science does not tell us how to live." (Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910)

Leo Tolstoy is a famous writer most notable for his writing War and Peace. What he meant by the quote is that Science is not the tool for us to explore and discover ourselves and the enviroment around us.

Tolstoy, as an Othodox Christian believes that faith is the only way that life can be rationalised. This can be shown in one of his works, A Confession. The book talks about the two big questions in life, "What will come of my life?" and "What is the meaning of life?". In the book, Tolstoy attempts to find answers to these questions through science and other areas of knowledge. He stated that only religion holds the key to the answers.

I do not agree to what Tolstoy said in the quotation not only because natural sciences have been a great tool for humans to understand more about life; but also the fact that it helped us to acquire clues to answer the two big questions to life Tolstoy stated.

"What will come of my life?" and "What is the meaning of life?"

AoK2: Natural Sciences -- Lesson 1

Guiding questions:

1. How are perception, reason, and experience used to determine knowledge in the Natural Sciences?


2. What is (a) scientific method?

I hope you enjoyed our 'Black Box' activity. In getting you to collaborate and predict what 'it' was, as well as what 'it' contained, you worked through an inductive process to illustrate the nature of scientific activity (as opposed to the subject/knowledge of science) -- i.e. you observed, thought, induced, explained, inferred, tested your hunches (hypotheses), justified your thoughts, etc. until you arrived at the most plausible account to answer the knowledge issue based on the evidence at hand.

To build on this introduction to AoK Natural Sciences and ready yourself for Lesson 2, you are to bring and post two things before next lesson -- i.e. please...

1. bring TWO advertisements that use the language of science in order to market their products (and be prepared to talk about them); and


2. post your reaction to one of the five quotations below by Tuesday, Feb. 19th -- your post should retell the quotation (i.e. put it in your own words), reflect your understanding of its meaning, and relate the quotation to your life by giving an example that illustrates your interpretation of it.

• "Science does not tell us how to live." (Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910)
• “As a matter of historical fact, the history of science is, by and large, a history of progress.’’ (Karl Popper, 1902-1994)
• “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.” (Albert Einstein, 1879-1955)
• “Everything you have learned as ‘obvious’ becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe.” (Buckminster Fuller, 1895-1983)
• “Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called a science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house.” (Henri Poincare, 1854-1912)