Assignment
2. Next, at least 24 hours later (after your initial post or a day or two before the deadline), read and then reply to one of your teammates, adding more information or constructively correcting something. Do NOT just repeat your first post; you must add something new. This post, as with your first must be 250-300 words in length.
3. Lastly, again at least 24 hours later but before the deadline, read and reply to your teammates. This reply could be more information or constructive information OR it could be a summary of the groups findings, as it pertains to one aspect of the article. Since this final post will also be 250-300 words in length, and I want all team members to have the opportunity to say something, do not be so thorough that you have left nothing for your teammates to say.
This is the Reply of fellow classmate under here
Hello everyone. I would like to start with a quote that I will build upon in my writing. Stated in the article, Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs, “Useless speculation turns in on itself and leads nowhere; good science, containing both seeds for its potential refutation and implications for more and different testable knowledge, reaches out” (Gould, 24). It’s the importance of “testable knowledge” that I intend on furthering in my work as it relates to a hypothesis, the second of four steps in the scientific method.
Science is empirical, “verified through observation and experiment” (Our Origins, Fifth Edition, 18). For two of the three notions in Gould’s article, empirical research in an effort to prove said hypotheses is impossible. “How could we possibly decide whether the hypothesis of testicular frying is right or wrong? We would have to know things that the fossil record cannot provide” (Gould, 26), and, regarding Siegel’s psychoactive claim to the Dinosaurs’ extinction, “It cannot be tested, for how can we know what dinosaurs tasted and what their livers could do?” (26). The former passages renew the thought of “testable knowledge” as introduced in this forum post. The Alvarez hypothesis, that the Dinosaurs’ extinction was the result an asteroid striking the earth sixty-five million years ago (25), forms a much healthier relationship with the notion of “testable knowledge.” That is, “The Alvarez hypothesis is exciting, fruitful science because it generates tests, provides us with things to do, and expands outward” (27). The note that an asteroid struck the earth and caused the mass extinction of the Dinosaurs is, you guessed it, testable, so now a step forward can finally be taken down the path of the scientific method. “It is the iridium–the source of the testable evidence–that counts and forges the crucial distinction between speculation and science” (26), keyword “testable evidence.” It’s exciting, really, moving beyond lofty, unprovable notions and onto a measurable hypothesis. “It led geochemists throughout the world to examine other sediments of the same age. . . Since its proposal in 1979, the Alvarez hypothesis has spawned hundreds of studies, a major conference, and attendant publications. Geologists are fired up” (26); this is what it’s all about! Taking steps forward by “discovery of how the natural world works” (Our Origins, Fifth Edition, 17) is the foundation of science, fueled by the scientific method. Without the ability to use “testable knowledge” we sit at a standstill–it gets us nowhere. With the development of the Alvarez hypothesis, a testable, sound notion that the Dinosaurs’ extinction resulted from the collision of an asteroid with the earth’s surface sixty-five million years ago, we break from the standstill on the path of the scientific method, reaching out for new possibilities and information.
As with a healthy hypothesis, it can be proven wrong, and I’d like for you to do the same with my forum post! Please, I am open to any questions, comments, concerns, anything relating to this discussion.