How Science Works

This course was given between February and May 2017.

Motivation

Do we need to have a Faculty of Sciences? Or is it better to have a shopping mall at Vezneciler Campus? What is the value of Science? In this course we will discuss why do we need Science, how Science improves people’s lives and how to do it better.

• Why Science matters
• What is Science, and what is not
• How do we know what we know
• What cannot be known
• What is the relationship between Science and Technology
• How Technology changes Science
• What are the key elements of good world-class Science
• The role of ideas, models and abstractions
• The role of experiments, tools and instruments
• What makes a good scientific explanation
• How not to fool ourselves
• How to do science with high impact

Classes

Here you find the slides that were used in classes.

• Class 1: Experiments, Scientific Impact and the Meaning of Life. (Mar 1, 2017). [Slides].
  Motivation of the course
• Class 2: Where is the Truth?. (Mar 6, 2017). [Slides].
  How do we know what we know
• Class 3: The Scientific Method. (Mar 13, 2017). [Slides].
  An operational definition of Science
• Class 4: Introduction to Logic. (Mar 27, 2017). [Slides].
  When a sentence is true or false
• Class 5: Logic Arguments. (Apr 17, 2017). [Slides].
  Which arguments are correct and which ones are true
• Class 6: Set Theory. (Apr 24, 2017). [Slides].
  Another perspective of Logic

Warning

There may be some math involved, but only the essential parts, including:

• Logic, Set Theory (two sides of the same coin)
• Concepts of Probabilities and Statistics