Scientific Attitudes and Values

A scientist must be A scientist must be curious about the curious about the world.world.

Galileo Galilei’s Galileo Galilei’s curiosity about the curiosity about the heavenly bodies made heavenly bodies made him the first person to him the first person to use a a telescope to use a a telescope to study the moon, the study the moon, the sun, the planets, and sun, the planets, and the stars. With his the stars. With his telescope, he telescope, he discovered the moons discovered the moons of Jupiter, the craters of Jupiter, the craters on the earth’s moon, on the earth’s moon, and the sunspots.and the sunspots.

A scientist is logical and systematic.

Among the reasons why Gregor Mendel

discovered the principles of heredity when others

have failed was his logical experimental

methods and his careful and accurate record

keeping. He was systematic in the way he

studied traits. For example, at first he

studied the inheritance of only one trait, then of two trait, and finally of three traits at a time.

From his accurate records, he was able to see patterns from which

traits would appear.

A scientist is opened-minded.

An opened-minded person is one who can modify plans or discard hypotheses if necessary. One such person was Johannes Kepler who was hired to developed evidence that planets moved along perfect circles. But after 15 years of work, he broke away from that idea and discovered that planets follow elliptical orbits.

A scientist is intellectually honest.

Isaac Newton built his laws of motion on the previous work of Galileo and others. In fact, Newton’s fist law was very similar to Galileo’s concept of inertia. He never claimed that he worked out his laws by himself. Newton acknowledge the contributions of Galileo and others to his work by saying that if he had been able to see further than others “it was by standing on the shoulders of giants”.

A scientist works hard and his persistent.

Marie Curie was the first person ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize twice. It was not surprising considering how hard she worked in a small wooden shed with a dirt floor and a leaky roof. This is where she discovered radium and polonium. They had to work on several thousand kilograms of uranium ore to get a tenth of a gram of pure radium.

A scientist does not jump to any conclusions.

John Dalton’s atomic theory was backed by experimental evidence. He was not the first to propose that the atom was the smallest particle of matter, but he was the first to use experimental evidence to support his theory.

A scientist is a creative and critical thinker.

Albert Einstein was able to derive his theory of relativity because he went beyond what was given and known at that time. He saw links and connections where others did not. He looked at things from different perspectives.

A scientist is rational.

The expertise of Dr. Ricardo M. Lantican in the plant breeding gave rise to varieties of plants which are now grown commercially in the Philippines, South East Asia and south Asia. Because of his rational decisions, he is successful in his research on cytoplasmic inheritance of hypersensitivity to a disease in maize.

A scientist is willing to suspend judgment he is sure of his results.

Dr. Luz Oliveros-Belardo five decades of her life to the study of natural products and Philippine essential oils. Through her logical and systematic study, new flavors were created and herbal madication was further enhanced.

A scientist tries new approaches to arrive

at solutions

Like the scientists who were cited in this lesson, you should also learn to develop and adopt the scientific attitudes. The determination, honesty , perseverance, patience and courage of our scientist are virtues worth emulating.

let us face it. Not everyone has ideas about the overall impact of technology. Some believe that technology is good because it has made living more comfortable and convenient. On the other hand, there are those who maintain that technology has caused many of the world’s problems today. These different views on technology point out the need to know when technology can be beneficial and when it can be harmful.

tHe EnDz…