publisher provided PowerPoint

1.  The human mind operates on different levels in its
effort to comprehend reality. Plato understood this
when he distinguished between knowledge and
opinion.
 The modern equivalent of Plato’s understanding is
the distinction between science and superstition.

2.  Superstition, like science, involves hypotheses, so
superstitious hypotheses can and should be evaluated
according to the criteria, developed previously, for
evaluating scientific hypotheses.
 Distinguishing science from superstition involves
psychological and volitional elements. Our criteria
must include those elements, which are:
◦ Evidentiary support.
◦ Objectivity.
◦ Integrity.

3.  Scientific evidence usually involves
measurements of things such as force, mass,
levels of aggression, social affluence, and so on,
usually acquired through instrumentation and
expressed mathematically.
◦ The means of acquisition and expression are one of the
key features that distinguishes science from superstition.
◦ Scientific hypotheses are about the natural world, so only
observations of the natural world count as evidence.

4.  What counts as evidence?
◦ Creditable reports of observations and measurements,
usually expressed mathematically, can be accepted as
conveying evidence, for scientific purposes.
 Unreliable evidence:
◦ Religious books and other appeals to authority. However
spiritually and politically meaningful, they do not confirm
or refute scientific hypotheses.
◦ Anecdotal evidence can point to scientifically-confirmable
evidence but doing so requires experimentation and
observation conducted according to scientific criteria.

5.  Reliable scientific experiments must meet the
following criteria:
◦ Scientific experiments must be replicable under
controlled conditions. This means that the experiment
must be repeatable at different times and at different
places.
◦ Scientific hypotheses are phrased precisely, usually in
mathematical language, to provide for extremely
accurate confirmations. Philosopher Karl Popper argued
that any genuinely scientific hypothesis must be framed
narrowly enough that it forbids certain things from
happening.

6. ◦ Ad hoc modifications can ruin hypotheses. They are
often the result of a researcher drawing an excessively
broad hypothesis that does not explain reasonably
foreseeable problems and anomalies. Ad hoc
modifications can also complicate a hypothesis, making
the hypothesis difficult to apply accurately.
◦ Naturalistic explanations, and those based on known
realities, are preferred to those based on the
superstitious or bizarre.
◦ Finally, science is progressive; superstition is not. This
means that a hypothesis supported by evidence will lead
to predictions that are true.

7.  Our beliefs about the world are objective to the
extent that they are unaffected by conditions
peculiar to the experiencing subject.
◦ Superstitions exist to satisfy emotional needs, especially
to help us cope with fear and anxiety. Superstition helped
people cope with the fact that for much of human history,
people died very suddenly and there was little, if
anything, most people could do to help them.

8. ◦ People are fascinated by the mysterious. It is sometimes
more emotionally satisfying to believe a magical
explanation than a scientific one.
◦ Many people are also mentally lazy. Once we learn to
think sloppily, it takes effort to learn to think rigorously.
◦ Our observation of the world can be distorted by appeals
to our emotion. An example of this is the placebo effect, in
which people can be led to believe a medicine or
procedure that has no therapeutic value can help them—
and it does.

9. ◦ We perceive what we expect to perceive.
 Pareidolia is our projection of familiar visual images onto
vague, relatively formless sensory stimuli, such as the face
of Jesus in the skillet or burns on a tortilla.
 The perceptual set refers to our tendency to perceive events
and objects in a way that our prior experience has led us to
expect. Do you see the white triangle in the image below?

10. ◦ Hallucinations distorted perception, particularly when we are
either falling asleep or waking up. At such times, people often
experience very vivid, realistic and emotionally charged
images. Collective hallucinations often happen when a crowd
is in a heightened emotional state.
◦ Confabulation can produce false recollections. We recall
memories in bits and pieces, and the brain fills in the gaps
between those bits (“confabulation”). Our brains normally and
naturally attempt to produce a coherent account of an event,
but our emotions, other people’s reactions, and repeatedly
reporting events can influence the accuracy of our memories.

11.  Integrity requires honesty in gathering and
presenting evidence and responding to theoretical
problems with honest, logical thinking. Integrity is
central to the scientific process and its lack,
central to the practice of superstition.
◦ Faked evidence is the clearest indication of lack of
integrity. This can range from astrology and pretending
one can bend metal with one’s mind to falsifying studies
that vaccines cause autism.

12. ◦ The puzzle-solving character of science differentiates it from
pseudoscience. When scientists are confronted with a
problem, they tend to work at it until they solve it. Astronomers
took 300 years to solve the puzzle of stellar parallax.
Astrologers do not figure out what went wrong when their
predictions fail to materialize.
◦ A hypotheses that is inconsistent with established theories or
laws tends to be a sign of superstition. One excellent example
is the belief of some yoga practitioners that they can levitate.
This is inconsistent with the well-established law of gravity.

13.  Distinguishing between science and superstition is
the hallmark of civilization.
 Scientifically grounded hypotheses are:
◦ Coherent.
◦ Precisely tailored.
◦ Narrowly formulated.
◦ Supported by genuine evidence.
◦ Productive of new insights.
 “Then a miracle occurs,” is a famous cartoon line.
It’s not acceptable in science.