Some say scientists are always arguing about what is right when anew theory is introduced in a journal or a book, and that's why science keepsdeveloping. Thus, scientists developed the term called "falsifiable",which means a theory or a series of evidence must can be proved false. [1]For example, if someone claims that all the swans are white, and this claim isfalsifiable because we can easily prove this statement is wrong when we find aswan in another color such as black. The idea calledFalsificationism gives people a chance to challenge the existed theory, whichbrings people willingness to challenge, to improve, and to put it into thetest. I hold the same opinion as the above statement and fully understand theexistence of disagreement between experts. Facts are something that has actualexistence or show occurrence [2], yet facts can be changed whenscientists have a new understanding of the world or have observed a newphenomenon happened, including the updates of theories, which means there may notbe such a thing can be considered as ultimate truth. In this essay, I am goingto use the areas of knowledge of natural science and history and the way ofknowing of reason to discuss the statement as I feel they should be usefultools to help explain the history of debates between scientists' reasoning andthe progression in science. Referencing the big revolution, the introduction ofquantum physics, in the 1920s, I am going to discuss the differences betweenphysicists to show the disagreement of some facts that have been proved correctlater.
Areas of knowledge can be proper tools to evaluate this topic because inevery aspect of knowledge there will be disagreement between experts. Includingall the areas in my essay seems unrealistic, so I will choose natural scienceand history as the representations of AOK to develop my topic. Natural scienceoften includes Math, Physics, and Chemistry, etc., and, for a very time,generations of people have put their effort into natural science. Zu Chongzhiin ancient China has successfully computed pi to be between 3.1415926 and3.1415927 in 480AD [3]. With the time passed, today we even can'tfigure out how did he receive such an accomplishment in old days although wehave an ability to compute pi into its 13.3 trillion of decimal places bysupercomputer nowadays. [4] In this case, we can easily see theprogress in natural science and the long history of it. With no doubt, if therewere successes in natural science during the past thousands of years, theremust be fails existed at the same time. Failures companies everyone in theirlife with no exception. We encountered failures and setbacks in daily life, inthe study, and in thoughts. Just imagine, when a scientist found out somethingmeaningful during his observation, based on that, he will publish his thoughtsand theories on magazines, journals, and books. When teenagers entered highschool first to know this scientific process, everybody simply considers it asa way to spread a new concept, however, most importantly, these sciencejournals and magazines also provided scientists a platform to cast arguments onnew theories. People can put repeated experiments with different results on ajournal or write an article to support what they think is right, building up ahealthier environment for scholarship and targeting the truth of science onthese journals and magazines. I believe the famous example for this in naturalscience area is the "fight" between classical physics and quantumphysics. Classic physics include classical mechanics and relativity, referringto classical physical bodies and forces based on Newton's law of motion, etc.[5]People thought these laws are enough for physics, yet with the development oftechnology, people gain the ability to study extremely small or fast (moving atspeed close to the speed of light) particles such as atoms.[6] Bydoing that, people found that these laws, which they used to consider as thebible of physics, no longer fit the actual experiment. The most significancedifference is the state of light. Using the previous knowledge, we knew lightis an electronic wave, and as long as it is a wave, light will not have any mass.[7][8] But with further experiment, people discovered the photoelectriceffect, which becomes the most convincing evidence that light is actually aparticle with mass. [9] For the following years, scientists begin tofind evidence for their theory to discover the nature of light. Every sidedevelops a whole system to explain their theory with different experiments. Whowill know that this little difference in the understanding nature of light cancause the massive development of quantum physics? At last, because bothclassical physics and quantum physics seem made an excellent explanation forthe nature of light, they have to conserve this disagreement into the physics,agreeing to today's fact that light can be both a wave and a particle. [10]This history event in natural science can be a perfect evidence to show thedisagreement between experts in a discipline. For limitation of today'scognition, we don't have any clue to explain the nature of light in one theory.The disagreement between experts will always exist until we have a bettersolution. In that day, we can confidently announce that we solve one of thedisagreements in science, and that disagreement leads to a giant step forwardin physics.
It seems not enough to only use areas of knowledge to explain thedisagreement between experts, in this way, using ways of knowing can make mypoint more comprehensive. Reason as a way of knowing can cause the disagreementeasily. No one is ever the same, so, unavoidably, people can think the samefact with different thoughts. In everyone's mind, people will analysis the samefact by their knowledge, reasoning, and even life experience, so with nosurprise, reasoning can be an essential fact that causes the disagreement. Ithink the debate is the suitable evidence to support my statement. Two teamswill argue around the same topic, which can be explained in two aspects. Eachteam uses their series of reasoning to win people's agreement. Thinking of thesame topic, these debaters use reason to have opposite ideas. They use theirlogic and reasoning to convince people.
In this essay, I have tried to use natural science and history as areasof knowledge and reason as ways of knowing to make my statement that it iscompletely possible that there is a disagreement between experts in adiscipline. I further illustrate my statement by using the example of thehistory between classic physics and quantum physics and debate. Bases on theexistence of disagreement between experts, I would like to further evaluateanother knowledge question that: "will the existence of disagreementbetween experts be a bad thing to scholarship, and how?"
Areas of knowledge can be proper tools to evaluate this topic because inevery aspect of knowledge there will be disagreement between experts. Includingall the areas in my essay seems unrealistic, so I will choose natural scienceand history as the representations of AOK to develop my topic. Natural scienceoften includes Math, Physics, and Chemistry, etc., and, for a very time,generations of people have put their effort into natural science. Zu Chongzhiin ancient China has successfully computed pi to be between 3.1415926 and3.1415927 in 480AD [3]. With the time passed, today we even can'tfigure out how did he receive such an accomplishment in old days although wehave an ability to compute pi into its 13.3 trillion of decimal places bysupercomputer nowadays. [4] In this case, we can easily see theprogress in natural science and the long history of it. With no doubt, if therewere successes in natural science during the past thousands of years, theremust be fails existed at the same time. Failures companies everyone in theirlife with no exception. We encountered failures and setbacks in daily life, inthe study, and in thoughts. Just imagine, when a scientist found out somethingmeaningful during his observation, based on that, he will publish his thoughtsand theories on magazines, journals, and books. When teenagers entered highschool first to know this scientific process, everybody simply considers it asa way to spread a new concept, however, most importantly, these sciencejournals and magazines also provided scientists a platform to cast arguments onnew theories. People can put repeated experiments with different results on ajournal or write an article to support what they think is right, building up ahealthier environment for scholarship and targeting the truth of science onthese journals and magazines. I believe the famous example for this in naturalscience area is the "fight" between classical physics and quantumphysics. Classic physics include classical mechanics and relativity, referringto classical physical bodies and forces based on Newton's law of motion, etc.[5]People thought these laws are enough for physics, yet with the development oftechnology, people gain the ability to study extremely small or fast (moving atspeed close to the speed of light) particles such as atoms.[6] Bydoing that, people found that these laws, which they used to consider as thebible of physics, no longer fit the actual experiment. The most significancedifference is the state of light. Using the previous knowledge, we knew lightis an electronic wave, and as long as it is a wave, light will not have any mass.[7][8] But with further experiment, people discovered the photoelectriceffect, which becomes the most convincing evidence that light is actually aparticle with mass. [9] For the following years, scientists begin tofind evidence for their theory to discover the nature of light. Every sidedevelops a whole system to explain their theory with different experiments. Whowill know that this little difference in the understanding nature of light cancause the massive development of quantum physics? At last, because bothclassical physics and quantum physics seem made an excellent explanation forthe nature of light, they have to conserve this disagreement into the physics,agreeing to today's fact that light can be both a wave and a particle. [10]This history event in natural science can be a perfect evidence to show thedisagreement between experts in a discipline. For limitation of today'scognition, we don't have any clue to explain the nature of light in one theory.The disagreement between experts will always exist until we have a bettersolution. In that day, we can confidently announce that we solve one of thedisagreements in science, and that disagreement leads to a giant step forwardin physics.
It seems not enough to only use areas of knowledge to explain thedisagreement between experts, in this way, using ways of knowing can make mypoint more comprehensive. Reason as a way of knowing can cause the disagreementeasily. No one is ever the same, so, unavoidably, people can think the samefact with different thoughts. In everyone's mind, people will analysis the samefact by their knowledge, reasoning, and even life experience, so with nosurprise, reasoning can be an essential fact that causes the disagreement. Ithink the debate is the suitable evidence to support my statement. Two teamswill argue around the same topic, which can be explained in two aspects. Eachteam uses their series of reasoning to win people's agreement. Thinking of thesame topic, these debaters use reason to have opposite ideas. They use theirlogic and reasoning to convince people.
In this essay, I have tried to use natural science and history as areasof knowledge and reason as ways of knowing to make my statement that it iscompletely possible that there is a disagreement between experts in adiscipline. I further illustrate my statement by using the example of thehistory between classic physics and quantum physics and debate. Bases on theexistence of disagreement between experts, I would like to further evaluateanother knowledge question that: "will the existence of disagreementbetween experts be a bad thing to scholarship, and how?"
