Let’s Talk About Science and Reality When I think of scientific knowledge, I think of the many science fair projects I had to do in school. Once we were given our topic, we had to do background research, come up with a hypothesis on what we thought would happen, and test that hypothesis. Before testing out my hypothesis, it would be so easy to assume what would happen next. I even got lazy during one of my projects because I did not prioritize my time to work on it. I used what I thought was “common sense” as to what would happen if I went with one of the options given. Instead of testing out my hypothesis, I asked my great aunt who was an English teacher at that time what she thought may happen. She thought the same thing I did. From that, it seemed like that was fair enough data to conclude my results. When I tried it out for the first time in front of my teacher and the classroom, I failed miserably. When the teacher asked had I done the proper research and had I performed a test on my hypothesis, it was quite obvious I had not. From that point on, I did not wait until the last minute to do any more science fair projects and I did not assume on the results.
Scientific knowledge is different from common sense because scientific knowledge is based on facts and data that offers the evidence to back up a thesis whereas common sense is our common knowledge that does not require much depth but mostly what we have learned through interactions with others. Scientific knowledge is also less subjective because the experiments can be controlled in a controlled environment and using common sense causes you to falsify judgment because the knowledge comes from assumptions.
The scientific method enables researchers to “focus on how things actually are and why,” (Babbie, 2010; pg. 11). They must be objective while gathering a multitude of data for analysis in order to come to a conclusion about the world around them. With the scientific method, researchers are able to organize their thoughts and procedures to be confident in the answers they find.
What I consider real may not be what my next door neighbor considers real. In other words, we may agree that we are both in the same world but may just have different “points of views,” (Babbie, 2010; pg. 9) about life and the events in it. For me, reality does not have to be seen in order for me to consider it real. I view feelings and emotions as real because