Today, scientific literacy is an essential aspect of any undergraduate education. Recipes for Science responds to this need by providing an accessible introduction to the nature of science and scientific methods, reasoning, and concepts that is appropriate for any beginning college student. It is designed to be adaptable to a wide variety of different kinds of courses, such as introductions to scientific reasoning or critical thinking, philosophy of science, and science education. In any of these different uses, the book helps students better navigate our scientific, 21st-century world.
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Introduction: Science and Your Everyday Life
Chapter 1: What is Science? 1.1 The Importance of Science 1.2 Defining Science 1.3 Recipes for Science Chapter 2: Experiments and Studies 2.1 Experiment: Connecting Hypotheses to Observations 2.2 The Perfectly Controlled Experiment 2.3 Experimental and Non-Experimental Methods Chapter 3: Models and Modeling 3.1 Models in Science 3.2 Varieties of Models 3.3 Learning from Models Chapter 4: Patterns of Inference 4.1 Deductive Reasoning 4.2 Deductive Reasoning in Hypothesis-Testing 4.3 Inductive and Abductive Reasoning Chapter 5: Statistics and Probability 5.1 The Roles of Statistics and Probability 5.2 Basic Probability Theory 5.3 Descriptive Statistics Chapter 6: Statistical Inference 6.1 Generalizing from Descriptive Statistics 6.2 Using Statistics to Test Hypotheses 6.3 A Different Approach to Statistical Inference Chapter 7: Causal Reasoning 7.1 What is Causation? 7.2 Testing Causal Hypotheses 7.3 Causal Modeling Chapter 8: Explanations, Theories, and Values 8.1 Understanding the World 8.2 Theories and Theory Change 8.3 Science, Society, and Values |
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