As usual, we started with a brief summary of the topics discussed in the last session and quickly moved on to the concept of progress in science. The accumulation of knowledge suggests that science makes progress over time. An example of this would be the model of the atom which has undergone four changes: the first discovery was not wrong because the information had not yet been discovered due to technological factors. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay It is said that the progress of science is a continuous process. This seemed to interest me because even though we think we know everything now, new discoveries are being made about the natural world that then add to what we knew before. We were then introduced to Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher who offers a somewhat opposing view to the progress of science. He believed that the progress of science was not cumulative but occurred due to paradigm shifts. Using a YouTube video, we were given an example of a paradigm shift: continental drift, developed in 1912 by Alfred Wegner. As a child, every time I looked at a map, I always wondered if it was possible that the earth once consisted of a single supercontinent. The video explained that the name was called Pangea which means whole earth. He supported this paradigm by noting that some continents fit together like puzzles and that even some rocks and fossils were discovered on some of the neighboring continents. It took some scientists a while to agree with their findings. Subsequently, scientists began to observe that there was thermal heat beneath the Earth's crust that may have contributed to the entire continental drift. In this lesson I added two new words to my science vocabulary list. The first is the Paradigm, which is a set of fundamental beliefs (premises) that scientists adhere to and use as a framework for conducting research. A YouTube video was used to better explain the concept. Before this course, I had no idea what a paradigm was. The second scientific word learned was anomaly. According to the Oxford Living Dictionary, an anomaly is “something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected. "Remember: This is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay I enjoyed this lecture because it was very informative and because I had a personal interest in the topic. Overall, I'm definitely enjoying the classes and as a communications major I can make connections to my field that I am excited about. I plan to do more research to better understand these topics and, by extension, the entire course content.
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