Module Code: HN5001

Module Title: Humanities II

Name of the Lecturer: Mr. J.A.D.F.M. Jayathilaka

Assignment 2

Name: Shanaka Samaraweera

Student ID No: 2013144CL1

Graduate Diploma Stage

Question 01

I.
a) According to Kuhn normal science is the puzzle solving activity which is a highly cumulative
enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scoop and precision
of scientific knowledge. This is the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which is the regular
work of scientists theorizing, observing, and experimenting within a settled paradigm or
explanatory framework.

b) Revolutions in science can be described as an "anomaly" arises when a puzzle, considered as

important or essential in some way, cannot be solved. The anomaly cannot be written off as
just an ill-conceived research project; it continues to assert itself as a thorn in the side of the
practicing scientists. The anomaly is a novelty that cannot be written off, and which cannot
be solved.
This opens up a period called the "crisis", during which time new methods and approaches
are permitted, since the older ones have proved incapable of rising to the task at hand
(solving the anomaly). Views and procedures previously considered heretical are temporarily
permitted, in the hope of cracking the anomaly.
One of these new approaches is successful, and it becomes the new paradigm through a
"paradigm shift". This constitutes the core of the scientific revolution.
The new paradigm is popularized in text-books, which serve as the instruction material for
the next generation of scientists, who are brought up with the idea that the paradigm, once
new and revolutionary, is just the way things are done. The novelty of the scientific
revolution recedes and disappears, until the process is begun anew with another anomaly-
crisis-paradigm shift.

c) Why does science progress, how does it progress, and what is the nature of its progress, to a
very great extent, the term science is reserved for fields that do progress in obvious ways.
But does a field make progress because it is a science, or is it a science because it makes
progress, Normal science progresses because the enterprise shares certain salient
characteristics, Members of a mature scientific community work from a single paradigm or
from a closely related set. Very rarely do different scientific communities investigate the
same problems. The result of successful creative work is progress.

Even if we argue that a field does not make progress that does not mean that an
individual school or discipline within that field does not. The man who argues that
philosophy has made no progress emphasizes that there are still Aristotelians, not that
Aristotelians has failed to progress. It is only during periods of normal science that progress
seems both obvious and assured. In part, this progress is in the eye of the beholder. The
absence of competing paradigms that question each other's aims and standards makes the
progress of a normal-scientific community far easier to see. The acceptance of a paradigm
frees the community from the need to constantly re-examine its first principles and
foundational assumptions. Members of the community can concentrate on the subtlest and
most esoteric of the phenomena that concern it. Because scientists work only for an
audience of colleagues, an audience that shares values and beliefs, a single set of standards
can be taken for granted.
 Unlike in other disciplines, the scientist need not select problems because they urgently
need solution and without regard for the tools available to solve them. The social scientists
tend to defend their choice of a research problem chiefly in terms of the social importance of
achieving a solution.

II. Scientists cannot by themselves "translate" between and old and a new paradigm; these
paradigms are "incommensurable", and can be translated only with the aid of historians and
philosophers of science. For example, the explanation for combustion before the oxygen
theory invoked a substance, widely accepted in the 18th century, which was given off when a
material burned. The modern theory explains the same phenomena as due to the taking-in
of oxygen, not the expulsion of the non-existent "phlogiston".
If, for example, the student of Newtonian dynamics ever discovers the meaning of terms like
force, mass, space, and time, he does so less from the incomplete though sometimes
helpful definitions in his text than by observing and participating in the application of these
concepts to problem-solution.
The transition from Newtonian to quantum mechanics evoked many debates about both the
nature and the standards of physics, some of which still continue. There are people alive
today who can remember the similar arguments engendered by Maxwells electromagnetic
theory and by statistical mechanics. And earlier still, the assimilation of Galileos and
Newtons mechanics gave rise to a particularly famous series of debates with Aristotelians,
Cartesians, and Leibnizians about the standards legitimate to science. When scientists
disagree about whether the fundamental problems of their field have been solved, the
search for rules gains a function that it does not ordinarily possess. While paradigms remain
secure, however, they can function without agreement over rationalization or without any
attempted rationalization at all.

Question 02
 I. According to Paul Feyerabend The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and
universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the
talents of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it is
pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional qualifications at
the expense of our humanity. In addition, the idea is detrimental to science, for it neglects the
complex physical and historical conditions which influence scientific change. It makes our science less
adaptable and more dogmatic: every methodological rule is associated with cosmological
assumptions, so that using the rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Naive
falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath
disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for -ranted that sense experience is a
better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the
artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions
may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting
them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science
in a different way and see what happens. Case studies such as those reported in the preceding
chapters show that such tests occur all the time, and that they speak against the universal validity of
any rule. All methodologies have their limitations and the only 'rule' that survives is 'anything goes'.

II. Almost all the philosophers of science maintain that there are at least two conditions which ought to
be met by any theory that is proposed for acceptance. These conditions are called consistency
condition and correspondence condition,
According to the consistency condition, the new theory must be consistent with the already well-
established theories. In other words, the consistency condition seeks to guarantee that a new theory
correspond with known facts by being consistent with existing theories.
According to the second condition, the new theory must correspond to the well-established facts
which are primary because the consistency condition can be reduced to it.

III. Feyerabend insists that the real test of a theory may be possible only by adopting an alternative
theory. We might believe that our existing theories are well supported facts, but there may be some
facts which might go against these theories. However we may never aware of there new facts unless
we transcend these theories and adopt an alternative, just as we cannot become aware of all the
defects of our society unless we look at it from the point of view of another society.
Feyerabend advocates that a new theory should not be constrained by the rule that it should first
correspond with facts which we already know. In fact, he says that we must make deliberate
attempts to develop theories which go counter to the so called known facts.

Question 3
 I. Reductionism refers to several related but distinct philosophical positions regarding the connections
between phenomena, or theories, "reducing" one to another, usually considered "simpler" or more
"basic".
Reductionism provided the assumptions and criteria which guide modern science. Those basic
assumptions are:
A system is reducible to its parts
All systems are made up to the same basic constituents which are discrete and atomistic
All systems have the same basic processes which are mechanical
Sum of the knowledge of all the parts of a system gives the knowledge of the whole system
Experts and specialists are the only legitimate knowledge seekers and knowledge justifiers.
All that can be granted to reductionist science is that it is an approach, a way to looking, a mode of
thought.
Reductionism can be applied to objects, phenomena, explanations, theories, and meanings. In the
sciences, application of methodological reductionism attempts explanation of entire systems in terms
of their individual, constituent parts and their interactions. For example, the temperature of a gas is
reduced to nothing but the average kinetic energy of its molecules in motion. Thomas Nagel speaks
of psychophysical reductionism (the attempted reduction of psychological phenomena to physics and
chemistry), as do others and physic-chemical reductionism (the attempted reduction of biology to
physics and chemistry), again as do others. In a very simplified and sometimes contested form, such
reductionism is said to imply that a system is nothing but the sum of its parts. However, a more
nuanced view is that a system is composed entirely of its parts, but the system will have features that
none of the parts have. The point of mechanistic explanations is usually showing how the higher
level features arise from the parts.

II. A laboratory experiment is conducted under highly controlled conditions. Participants are brought to
a lab setting to be tested. The researcher manipulates aspects of the environment in order to
measure its impact on the participants behavior or performance this is called the independent
variable. The dependent variable is the change in behavior that is measured by the researcher. The
dependent variable is believed to be under the control of the independent variable. All other
variables are controlled as far as possible. This way, conclusions of cause and effect can be made
since only the independent variable is controlled so it is assumed that this is what causes the
behavior change.
This high level of control leads to experiment settings that are very unnatural, and participants are
often asked to complete very strange and bizarre tasks. Therefore, individuals are more than likely
going to behave very differently in laboratory experiment situations than they would in real and
natural settings. Consequently, laboratory experiments lack ecological validity and mundane realism,
as they are not true to real life. This lack of ecological validity that surrounds laboratory experiments
also makes it very difficult to generalize finding from experiments to real life situations.

One further problem of laboratory experiments concerns ethics. There must always be some form of
deception involved in such experiments. If the participants knew every aspect of the study, then it
would be pointless to carry it out. In order to produce valid results, participants must be deceived to
some extent. However, there are guidelines that must be followed regarding ethics, making it difficult
for researchers to produce ethical research.
 If we summarize these facts we can see two major drawbacks in these controlled experiments, they
are

Internal validity: Do the data permit causal inferences?

Internal validity is a question of proper experimental controls and
Correct data analysis.

External validity: Can we generalize our inferences from the lab to the
Field?
Problem of induction: Behavioral regularities persist in new situations as long as the relevant
underlying conditions remain essentially unchanged.
Problem of representativity: Are experimental subjects representative for out of sample applications

III. The argument is based on the premise that modern science is quintessentially reductionist. Its
reductionist nature under-girds an economic structure based on exploitation, profit maximization
and capital accumulation. Reductionist science is also at the root of the growing ecological crisis,
because it entails a transformation of nature such that the processes, regularities and regenerative
capacity of nature are destroyed.

This reductionist method has its uses in the fields of abstraction such as logic and mathematics, and
in the fields of manmade artifacts such as mechanics But it fails singularly to lead to a perception of
reality (truth) in the case of living organisms such as nature, including man, in which the whole is not
merely the sum of the parts, if only because the parts are so cohesively interrelated that isolating any
part distorts perception of the whole.
So as a conclusion we can see Kuhns model of science has its own advantage in the fields like logic,
mathematics and all sorts of artificial (man-made) things. But when it comes to living organisms like
man, animals, plants and all sorts of other living things this method only bring chaos and destruction
to the whole world.

Question 04

I. Since ancient times societies have known that forests are the best insurance against desertification
and famine. The reductionist version of this response to desertification is itself a prescription for
desertification. Under the World Food Programme, FAO is planting eucalyptus in Ethiopia. Under the
social forestry schemes for ecological repair, the World Bank, SIDA, USAID have coaxed India into
putting farmlands under eucalyptus. People who for centuries have been planters and protectors of
trees have suddenly been marginalized. Knowledge of tree planting has become the sole preserve of
international and national bureaucracies. Throughout the world, irrespective of local ecological
 conditions and economic needs, the prescription is only one - eucalyptus. The biological wealth and
diversity of the tropics have been destroyed to make room for the reductionist solution, even though
eucalyptus causes rather than cures deserts, upsets the cycle of life, the hydrological cycle and the
nutrient cycle.

First, in regions which have water scarcity, the high water intake of eucalyptus destroys the natural
processes that replenish soil moisture and recharge the sources of underground water, turning the
region into a completely arid zone. Moreover, eucalyptus damages the innate allomorphic capacity of
all other plants, seriously depleting the gene pool. The process initiated by large-scale cultivation of
eucalyptus in water-scarce regions therefore leads inexorably to desertification.

Second, on fertile agricultural lands, eucalyptus, when planted and harvested in short rotation,
heavily diminishes soil nutrients, destroying the soil's capacity for biological productivity. Moreover,
eucalyptus destroys the environment for soil fauna that are at once 'factories' for reproducing soil
fertility, and efficient 'machines' for maintaining the soil structure.
If we discuss this issue with respect to Sri lanka Studies on the impact of eucalypt plantations on
water resources are yet to be carried out. However, it has been established that catchments under
forest vegetation have a lower water yield than those under scrub or grasslands, but they may
regulate the stream flow better, depending upon the characteristics of the forest vegetation. The
important characteristics affecting this are: ground cover, growth rate, addition of organic matter to
the soil, nature of the surface root system etc. However, observations made in the dry zone of Sri
Lanka, showed lower moisture content in the lower soil layers under E. camaldulensis than teak and
natural forest. This could be attributed to the absorption of moisture from lower horizons due to
greater moisture requirements of eucalypts.

Quantitative information is not available on the effect of eucalypts on fauna. However, it has been
noticed that, numbers and diversity of mammals, birds and insects in eucalypts plantations are much
less than in floristically more diverse natural forests.

II. Pesticides are chemical compounds that are used to kill pests, including insects, rodents, fungi and
unwanted plants (weeds). Pesticides are used in public health to kill vectors of disease, such as
mosquitoes, and in agriculture, to kill pests that damage crops. By their nature, pesticides are
potentially toxic to other organisms, including humans.

Pesticides Are Hazardous To Human Health,

Causing reproductive and developmental effects, cancer, kidney and liver damage, endocrine
disruption, etc. Exposure mainly occurs through the skin, inhalation, orally, or through the eyes.

Pesticides Cause Special Problems For Children,

Whose bodies and developing organs are particularly vulnerable. Children take in pesticides in the
womb, at home and daycare, and on schools and playgrounds. Using MRI technology, researchers
 found that even low levels exposure to the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos in utero caused
irreversible brain damage.

Pesticides Can Contaminate Our Food, Harm Pollinators, And Threaten Our Ecosystems.
Pesticides, especially a group of pesticides called neonicitinoids, are killing the pollinators we depend
on to support our food systems: bees, butterflies, bats, hummingbirds, moths, other insects, and
even lizards and small mammals.

If we discuss about the harmful experience from pesticides in Sri lanka large amounts of pesticides
used in the agricultural sector also get into the water of rivers and lakes. Groundwater and surface
water are also polluted by the heavy use of fertilizer and pesticides and by storm run-offs. Coastal
and marine waters are threatened by pesticides, fertilizer, industrial waste and run-offs from waste
dumps. Rivers that flow out into the sea deteriorate the sea water. Oil spills, chemicals and waste
also decrease the quality of Sri Lankas seawater. In 2000, only 25% of the households in Sri Lanka got
their water through pipes. Even the water that does come through the pipe from local suppliers is
not monitored efficiently. This is why a part of the population does not get clean drinking water.
Some of the other health hazards are chronic kidney disease (CKD) among paddy farmers in the
North central province.

Many alternatives are available to reduce the effects pesticides have on the environment.
Alternatives include manual removal, applying heat, covering weeds with plastic, placing traps and
lures, removing pest breeding sites, maintaining healthy soils that breed healthy, more resistant
plants, cropping native species that are naturally more resistant to native pests and supporting
biocontrol agents such as birds and other pest predators. Biological controls such as resistant plant
varieties and the use of pheromones, have been successful and at times permanently resolve a pest
problem.