1. According to the passage, the role of a dogmatic attitude of dogmatic behaviour in the development of science is






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MCQ-> Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more generally, dogmatic behaviour: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of `background noise’; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.It is clear that this dogmatic attitude; which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume’s theory, and to the popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of dogmatism.My logical criticism of Hume’s psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our central problem. For the dogmatic attitude is clearly related to the tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and to confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations, whereas the critical attitude is one of readiness to change them - to test them; to refute them; to falsify them, if possible. This suggests that we may identify the critical attitude with the scientific attitude, and the dogmatic attitude with the one which we have described as pseudo-scientific. It further suggests that genetically speaking the pseudo-scientific attitude is more primitive than, and prior to, the scientific attitude: that it is a pre-scientific attitude. And this primitivity or priority also has its logical aspect. For the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it: criticism must be directed against existing and influential beliefs in need of critical revision – in other words, dogmatic beliefs. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.Thus, science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices. The scientific tradition is distinguished from the pre-scientific tradition in having two layers. Like the latter, it passes on its theories; but it also passes on a critical attitude towards them. The theories are passed on, not as dogmas, but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.The critical attitude, the tradition of free discussion of theories with the aim of discovering their weak spots so that they may be improved upon, is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality. From the point of view here developed, all laws, all theories, remain essentially tentative, or conjectural, or hypothetical, even when we feel unable to doubt them any longer. Before a theory has been refuted we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.In the context of science, according to the passage, the interaction of dogmatic beliefs and critical attitude can be best described as:
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MCQ-> A difficult readjustment in the scientist's conception of duty is imperatively necessary. As Lord Adrain said in his address to the British Association, unless we are ready to give up some of our old loyalties, we may be forced into a fight which might end the human race. This matter of loyalty is the crux. Hitherto, in the East and in the West alike, most scientists, like most other people, have felt that loyalty to their own state is paramount. They have no longer a right to feel this. Loyalty to the human race must take its place. Everyone in the West will at once admit this as regards Soviet scientists. We are shocked that Kapitza who was Rutherford's favourite pupil, was willing when the Soviet government refused him permission to return to Cambridge, to place his scientific skill at the disposal of those who wished to spread communism by means of H-bombs. We do not so readily apprehend a similar failure of duty on our own side. I do not wish to be thought to suggest treachery, since that is only a transference of loyalty to another national state. I am suggesting a very different thing; that scientists the world over should join in enlightening mankind as to the perils of a great war and in devising methods for its prevention. I urge with all the emphasis at my disposal that this is the duty of scientists in East and West alike. It is a difficult duty, and one likely to entail penalties for those who perform it. But, after all, it is the labours of scientists which have caused the danger and on this account, if on no other, scientists must do everything in their power to save mankind from the madness which they have made possible. Science from the dawn of History, and probably longer, has been intimately associated with war. I imagine that when our ancestors descended from the trees they were victorious over the arboreal conservatives because flints were sharper than coconuts. To come to more recent times, Archimedes was respected for his scientific defense of Syracuse against the Romans; Leonardo obtained employment under the Duke of Milan because of his skill in fortification, though he did mention in a postscript that he could also paint a bit. Galileo similarly derived an income from the Grant Duke of Tuscany because of his skill in calculating the trajectories of projectiles. In the French Revolution, those scientists who were not guillotined devoted themselves to making new explosives. There is therefore no departure from tradition in the present day scientists manufacture of A-bombs and H-bomb. All that is new is the extent of their destructive skill.I do not think that men of science can cease to regard the disinterested pursuit of knowledge as their primary duty. It is true that new knowledge and new skills are sometimes harmful in their effects, but scientists cannot profitably take account of this fact since the effects are impossible to foresee. We cannot blame Columbus because the discovery of the Western Hemisphere spread throughout the Eastern Hemisphere an appallingly devastating plague. Nor can we blame James Watt for the Dust Bowl although if there had been no steam engines and no railways the West would not have been so carelessly or so quickly cultivated To see that knowledge is wisely used in primarily the duty of statesmen, not of science; but it is part of the duty of men of science to see that important knowledge is widely disseminated and is not falsified in the interests of this or that propaganda.Scientific knowledge has its dangers; but so has every great thing. And over and beyond the dangers with which it threatens the present, it opens up, as nothing else can, the vision of a possible happy world, a world without poverty, without war, with little illness. And what is perhaps more than all, when science has mastered the forces which mould human character, it will be able to produce populations in which few suffer from destructive fierceness and in which the great majority regard other people, not as competitors, to be feared, but as helpers in a common task. Science has only recently begun to apply itself to human beings except in their purely physical aspect. Such science as exists in psychology and anthropology has hardly begun to affect political behaviour or private ethics. The minds of men remain attuned to a world that is fast disappearing. The changes in our physical environment require, if they are to bring well being, correlative changes in our beliefs and habits. If we cannot effect these changes, we shall suffer the fate of the dinosaurs, who could not live on dry land.I think it is the duty of science. I do not say of every individual man of science, to study the means by which we can adapt ourselves to the new world. There are certain things that the world quite obviously needs; tentativeness, as opposed to dogmatism in our beliefs: an expectation of co-operation, rather than competition, in social relations, a lessening of envy and collective hatred These are things which education could produce without much difficulty. They are not things adequately sought in the education of the present day.It is progress in the human sciences that we must look to undo the evils which have resulted from a knowledge of the physical world hastily and superficially acquired by populations unconscious of the changes in themselves that the new knowledge has made imperative. The road to a happier world than any known in the past lies open before us if atavistic destructive passion can be kept in leash while the necessary adaptations are made. Fears are inevitable in our time, but hopes are equally rational and far more likely to bear good fruit. We must learn to think rather less of the dangers to be avoided than of the good that will be within our grasp if we believe in it and let it dominate our thoughts. Science, whatever unpleasant consequences it may have by the way, is in its very nature a liberator, a liberator of bondage to physical nature and, in time to come a liberator from the weight of destructive passion. We are on the threshold of utter disaster or unprecedented glorious achievement. No previous age has been fraught with problems so momentous and it is to science that we must look for happy issue.The duty of science, according to the author is :-
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MCQ->According to the passage, the role of a dogmatic attitude of dogmatic behaviour in the development of science is....
MCQ-> Directions : In the following questions, you have two brief passages with 5 questions in each passage, Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives. PASSAGE -I Stuck with be development dilemma? Stay away from management courses. Seriously, one of the biggest complaints that organisations have about management courses is that they fail to impact the participants' on-the-job behaviour. Some management trainers stress the need for follow-up and reinforcement on the job. Some go so far as briefing the participants' managers on what behaviour they should be reinforcing back on the job. Others include a follow-up training day to review the progress of the participants. None of this is really going far enough. The real problem is that course promoters view development as something which primarily, takes place in a classroom. A course is an event and events are, by definition limited in time. When you talk about follow-up after a course, it is seen as a nice idea, but not as an essential part of the participants' development programme. Any rational, empowered individual should be able to take what has been learnt in a course and transfer it to the work place or so the argument goes. Another negative aspect of the course mindset is that, primarily, development is thought to be about skill-acquisition. So, it is felt that the distinction between taking the course and behaving differently in the work place parallels the distinction between skill-acquisition and skill-application. But can such a sharp distinction be maintained ? Skills are really acquired only in the context of applying them on the job, finding them effective and therefore, reinforcing them. The problem with courses is that they are events, while development is an on-going process which, involves, within a complex environment, continual interaction, regular feedback and adjustment. As we tend to equate development with a one-off event, it is difficult to get seriously motivated about the follow-up. Anyone paying for a course tends to look at follow-up as an unnecessary and rather costly frill. PASSAGE II One may look at life, events, society, history, in another way. A way which might, at a stretch, be described as the Gandhian way, though it may be from times before Mahatma Gandhi came on the scene. The Gandhian reaction to all the grim poverty, squalor and degradation of the human being would approximate to effort at self-change and self-improvement, to a regime of living regulated by discipline from within. To change society, the individual must first change himself. In this way of looking at life and society, words too begin to mean differently. Revolution, for instance, is a term frequently used, but not always in the sense it has been in the lexicon of the militant. So also with words like peace and struggle. Even society may mean differently, being some kind of organic entity for the militant, and more or less a sum of individuals for the Gandhian. There is yet another way, which might, for want of a better description, be called the mystic. The mystic's perspective measures these concerns that transcend political ambition and the dynamism of the reformer, whether he be militant or Gandhian. The mystic measures the terror of not knowing the remorseless march of time:he seeks to know what was before birth, what comes after death. The continuous presence of death, of the consciousness of death, sets his priorities. and values: militants and Gandhians kings and prophets must leave all that they have built:all that they have un-built and depart when messengers of the buffalo-riding Yama come out of the shadows. Water will to water, dust to dust. Think of impermanence. Everything passes.What is the passage about?
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MCQ-> Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers for the through that follow. Soros, we must note, has never been a champion of free market capitalism. He has followed for nearly all his public life the political ideas of the late Sir Karl Popper who laid out a rather jumbled case for what he dubbed "the open society" in his The Open Society and Its Enemies (1953). Such a society is what we ordinarily call the pragmatic system in which politicians get involved in people's lives but without any heavy theoretical machinery to guide them, simply as the ad hoc parental authorities who are believed to be needed to keep us all on the straight and narrow. Popper was at one time a Marxist socialist but became disillusioned with that idea because he came to believe that systematic ideas do not work in any area of human concern. The Popperian open society Soros promotes is characterized by a very general policy of having no firm principles, not even those needed for it to have some constancy and integrity. This makes the open society a rather wobbly idea, since even what Popper himself regarded as central to all human thinking, critical rationalism, may be undermined by the openness of the open society since its main target is negative avoid dogmatic thinking, and avoid anything that even comes close to a set of unbreachable principles. No, the open society is open to anything at all, at least for experimental purposes. No holds are barred, which, if you think about it, undermines even that very idea and becomes unworkable. Accordingly, in a society Soros regards suited to human community living, the state can manipulate many aspects of human life, including, of course; the economic behavior of individuals and firms. It can control the money supply, impose wage and price controls, dabble in demand or supply-side economics, and do nearly everything a central planning board might —provided it does not settle into any one policy firmly, unbendingly. That is the gist of Soros's Popperian politics. Soros' distrusts capitalism in particular, because of the alleged inadequacy of neoclassical economics, the technical economic underpinnings of capitalist thinking offered up in many university economics departments. He, like many others outside and even inside the economics discipline, fmds the arid reductionism of this social science false to the facts, and rightly so. But the defense of capitalist free markets does not rest on this position. Neo-classical thinking depends in large part on the 18th- and 19th-century belief that human society operates according to laws, not unlike those that govern the physical universe. Most of social science embraced that faith, so economics isn't unusual in its loyalty to classical mechanics. Nor do all economists take the deterministic lawfulness of economic science literally — some understand that the laws begin to operate only once people embark upon economic pursuits. Outside their commercial ventures, people can follow different principles and priorities, even if it is undeniable that most of their endeavors have economic features. Yet, it would be foolish to construe religion or romance or even scientific inquiry as solely explicable by reference to the laws of economics. In his criticism of neo-classical economic science, then, George Soros has a point: the discipline is too dependent on Newtonian physics as the model of science. As a result, the predictions of economists who look at markets as if they were machines need to be taken with a grain of salt. Some — for example the school of Austrian economists — have made exactly that point against the neo-classical. Soros draws a mistaken inference: if one defense of the market is flawed, the market lacks defense. This is wrong. If it is true that from A we can infer B, it does not prove that B can only be inferred from A; C or Z, too, might be a reason for B.As per the paragraph, author believes that
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