Critical Thinking About Science

Though it is not possible for us all to be scientific experts, it is possible to think more clearly about the information that science provides for us. To do so is important for several reasons:

You have already learned many of the skills that you will need to do this in your critical thinking class. Scientific reasoning is in large measure a specialized and more rigorous form of everyday reasoning. This page provides links to some topics where science reasoning, our daily lives, and public decision making intersect.

Thinking clearly about science begins in getting the right information, but the sort of information that you need is of two types and so you will see on this page information is organized into two categories.

First, there are links to information about specific issues (see links on the left under "Sciences"). Second, there are links to discussions about controversies involving science (see links to the right under "Controversies" and "Explore Topics" above and here). Such controversies come in a variety of different forms. Sometimes there are controversies within the scientific community. These includes debates about methodology, evidence, and honesty. The other sorts are controversies over public policy decisions that must be made using information provided by scientific research. Sometimes these controversies revolve around whether the research should even be pursued, how the information attained through research should be used, or what sorts of research should be (publicly) funded.

Finally, the second section on the righthand side, called "Controversies about science, reasoning, and knowledge" is a direct application of critical thinking skills to questions about science. This section includes a discussion about the nature of science. In order to think clearly about science it is important to understand what we should be expect from science. What can science tell us, how should we think about scientific knowledge, and what are the limits of scientific knowledge? Which limits are limits of current information and which are limits due to the nature of scientific knowledge? The discussion in that section is just a taste of what philosophy of science is about.

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This page is designed as a gateway for your investigations into these issues and so provides a starting point for critical thinking about science. I do not claim that all topics that you might be interested in or need to know about are linked here, but these are some of the topics and controversies that are currently in the media and so in public awareness. Exploring these links might help you find information on other topics. If you have questions and don't see what you are looking for, you are welcome to email me with your questions or suggestions.