perscribed title #10 outline

Prescribed title: What similarities and differences are there between Scientific and Historical Explanations?

Body 1: similarities
1: similarities between history and science explanation
 Conformation bias: both history and science use this when forming a hypothesis or thesis
o Personal experience: TOK checks lab; my group disregarded certain information because we did not find it relevant to our thesis.|
o Physics labs: I have disregarded information that disproved one of my hypotheses because it believed that it was a fluke in the testing.
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 Ways of knowing (perception) is used in both areas of knowledge.
o History example: we can see that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is the spark that caused the First World War and use that as a key fact to explain why Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia.
o Science example: we can feel that Heat is a byproduct of friction (rubbing our hands together.) / We can see that heat is a byproduct of friction by the way that a fire is stared when two pieces of wood are rubbed together and begin to smolder.
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 Implications of similarities:
o By creating a similarity between science and history explanations, may mean that the two can influence each other, such as we can predict historical events by the things leading up to them.
o Understanding = predicting
o Abel states that understanding an event does not mean that it can be predicted (science)

Body 2: differences
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 Reasoning: induction vs. deduction
o Sciences uses induction: scientific explanations use small specific details to create laws and theories.
• Ex) in physics we noticed the effects of gravity and tested the properties of it. This explanation of gravity is one of the key components of the General Theory of Relativity, which is used to explain the motion of all astrological bodies.
• Ex) we watched the movie “Judgment Day: intelligent design on trial” in TOK. In the movie, it explained that Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution from first specifically studying the beaks of finches in the south pacific Galapagos Island.
o History uses deduction: Historical explanations are deduced from large events to figure out the causes of the effect.
• Ex) we now know that Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attack, through deducing what the bombing style was, the motivations for attacking, and foreign threats.
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 Testability
o Facts are derived from testing
o Scientific explanations can be tested repeatedly. The whole point of science is to prove a hypothesis through repetitive testing
o Historical explanations cannot be repeated to prove that they are fact. We know the causes of single party states to rise such as Mussolini’s Italy, but we cannot determine if one will rise in the future by evaluating current conditions.




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 explanation influences
o Explanations in science and history are differently influenced.
o Ex) historical explanations are valid to the time era only when the background of the event has been thoroughly investigated.
• The assassination of Franz Ferdinand can only be understood as the spark of the First World War only after someone understands that there was political tension between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, and that there was an alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary at the time of 1914.
o Sciences is independent from background information on the hypothesis that it is testing
• Ex) you do not need to know how the general theory of relativity was formulated and what the ideas are behind Albert Einstein’s reasoning in the formulas in order to test the equation.

Conclusion
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 There are more differences between scientific explanation and historical explanation than there are similarities.




Bibliography:
Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Knopf, 1999. Print.