Scientific worldviews Notes

What Do Scientific Worldviews In Individuals & Societies Mean?

1. A worldview is the "big picture" way a person or group explains how the world works.
2. In Individuals & Societies, we often zoom in on a particular part of human life (trade, politics, the environment, social groups) and then use evidence to build explanations.
3. When those explanations are built using systematic methods of inquiry, we can describe them as scientific worldviews.
4. Scientific worldviews in Individuals & Societies are not "science" in the same way as chemistry or physics, but they still aim to be evidence-based, logical, and open to revision when better evidence appears.

How Do Scientific Worldviews Balance Evidence, Models, And Values?

1. Evidence: observations, data, documents, interviews, surveys, statistics, maps, and images.
2. Concepts and models: ideas that help organize evidence, such as sustainability, globalization, comparative advantage, power, or social cohesion.
3. Values and goals: what we think matters, for example fairness, freedom, economic growth, or protecting biodiversity.

How Do Different Disciplines Build Different Scientific Worldviews?

1. Individuals & Societies includes several disciplines (sometimes called humanities or social sciences).
2. They all study how social groups form and interact, but through different lenses.

Geography connects people, place, and environment

1. Spatial patterns (where things happen and why there)
2. Systems thinking (how environmental, economic, and social factors connect)
3. Human impact on natural environments over time

Economics explaisn choices under scarcity

1. Economic worldviews often focus on:
   1. Trade-offs and opportunity cost
   2. Incentives and how they shape behavior
   3. The effects of trade and globalization on prices, jobs, and living standards
2. Economists may disagree strongly about globalization, not because they ignore evidence, but because they weigh different evidence and assumptions about markets, government regulation, and inequality.

Business management studies firms and decision-making

1. Business management builds worldviews about how organizations operate, compete, and respond to consumers and regulations.
2. Evidence might include:
   1. Market research (surveys, focus groups)
   2. Financial data and sales trends
   3. Case studies of companies and industries
3. Business-oriented worldviews can highlight how global communication networks and shared research can lower costs and improve product choice, while also raising questions about the power of multinationals.

Politics focuses on power, governance, and collective decisions

1. Politics (political science) studies how decisions are made in societies, who has power, and how rules are enforced.
2. Political worldviews often examine:
   1. Institutions (governments, courts, international organizations)
   2. Competing ideologies (for example, market-focused vs state-focused approaches)
   3. The tension between national sovereignty and global interdependence
3. In debates about globalization, political analysis asks what governments can realistically control, and how policies affect different groups.

Psychology explains individual behavior in social contexts

1. Psychology builds worldviews by investigating why individuals think and act as they do, often using experiments or structured surveys.
2. Psychological evidence can help explain:
   1. Why people accept or reject scientific claims
   2. How identity and group belonging shape opinions
   3. How risk perception affects environmental choices

Sociology explains social groups, norms, and social change

1. Sociology focuses on how societies are structured and how social groups interact.
2. Sociological worldviews can help us analyze globalization by asking:
   1. How work and community life change as societies become more specialized
   2. Whether social cohesion increases or weakens in large, complex societies
   3. Who benefits from rapid change and who is left behind

History builds explanations from evidence across time

1. History constructs worldviews by studying continuity and change over time, using sources as evidence.
2. Historians distinguish between:
   1. Primary sources, created at the time (or collected directly by the investigator), such as letters, photographs, government records, surveys, or interviews.
   2. Secondary sources, produced later or by people not directly involved, such as history books and analyses.
3. This distinction matters because different sources provide different kinds of access to the past and present.

Building Scientific Worldviews With Sources And Inquiry Skills

Step 1: Frame A Clear Research Question

1. Good research questions are specific and investigable.
2. They often include:
   1. A place and time
   2. A group affected
   3. A measurable outcome

Step 2: Gather A Range Of Evidence

1. In Individuals & Societies, you might use:
   1. Surveys and interviews (often primary data you compile yourself)
   2. Statistical datasets (trade flows, income, pollution levels)
   3. Maps and satellite images
   4. Policy documents and media reports

Step 3: Evaluate Reliability And Limitations

1. A scientific worldview requires you to ask: How trustworthy is this evidence?
2. You can evaluate sources by considering origin and purpose, and by identifying bias and missing voices.

Step 4: Corroborate And Compare Perspectives

1. Because no single source "tells the whole story," you strengthen your conclusions by:
   1. Comparing multiple sources about the same issue
   2. Checking whether evidence agrees or conflicts
   3. Explaining why differences might exist
2. This is especially important in contested topics like globalization and environmental change.

Step 5: Use Concepts To Organize Explanations

1. Concepts act like lenses. For example:
   1. Sustainability helps evaluate whether resource use can continue without damaging ecosystems or human wellbeing.
   2. Globalization helps explain increased interconnection between places through trade, migration, and communication.

How Can Sustainability Be Used As A Scientific Worldview?

1. Sustainability aims to include everyone and ensure access to key resources, while respecting cultures.
2. It is often described using three connected dimensions:
   1. Environmental: protecting biodiversity, reducing pollution, preventing climate change, avoiding ozone damage.
   2. Economic: access to finance, reducing corruption, reducing absolute poverty.
   3. Social: access to clean water and sanitation, education, health care, justice, safety, equality, and respect for cultures.
3. Scientific worldviews about sustainability combine measurements (for example, pollution levels or school enrollment) with judgments about what counts as "fair" or "acceptable risk."

How Do Globalization Debates Show How Worldviews Differ?

1. Globalization is a powerful example because it produces both measurable trends and strong disagreements.
2. Two broad viewpoints:
   1. Hyper-globalists emphasize that borders matter less, and markets and networks can raise incomes, improve choice, and lower prices.
      1. Some also worry that rapid change benefits only a privileged few and strengthens multinationals.
   2. Sceptical internationalists argue globalization is exaggerated and that the world has been similarly (or more) integrated in the past, such as before the First World War.
3. These positions are not just "opinions."
   1. They are competing interpretations based on different selections of evidence, different time scales, and different assumptions about what should matter most (growth, equality, cultural stability, or political control).

What Are Some Common Pitfalls When Building Scientific Worldviews?

1. Cherry-picking: selecting only evidence that supports your view.
2. Single-story explanations: blaming one factor (for example, trade) for outcomes that are actually caused by many interacting factors.
3. Ignoring scale: mixing local impacts (a polluted river) with global trends (climate change) without explaining the link.
4. Assuming neutrality: forgetting that choices of concepts and measures can reflect values.