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UW and the Hubble

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The captain of the space shuttle, Atlantis, which took off ... Hubble's 19th anniversary. April 21 this year. Released one of most interesting pictures ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: UW and the Hubble


1
UW and the Hubble
  • The captain of the space shuttle, Atlantis, which
    took off yesterday to fix the Hubble is a UW
    graduate in engineering.
  • The mission includes a new camera that UW faculty
    in aeronautics and astronautics helped develop.

2
Hubbles 19th anniversary
  • April 21 this year
  • Released one of most interesting pictures
  • A peculiar set of galaxies called Arp 194
    several galaxies and a cosmic fountain (of stars,
    gas, and dust) that stretches over 100,000 light
    years
  • The blue star forming regions

3
Scientific Explanation
  • Evolution and medicine
  • HIV virus RNA-based retrovirus
  • Replicates at a fast rate
  • Low copying fecundity
  • So lots of mutations
  • If all of the various cocktails stop working
    for a patient with HIV, frequently he or she and
    their doctor will gamble
  • Take the patient off all medications so that the
    wild type re-emerges and blast it with meds
    that once worked.

4
(No Transcript)
5
Scientific Explanation
  • Why sex?
  • It is expensive in lots of ways
  • But it allows for diversity of ones offspring
    which might protect them in terms of new
    challenges (new pathogens, other environmental
    changes, etc.)
  • The guppies in pools
  • The Red Queen hypothesis
  • Not an explanation of how sex initially evolved
    (still an ongoing research question)
  • Natural selection cant look forward (its
    blind and dumb)

6
Scientific Explanation
  • Sexual selection (Darwin)
  • Male/male competition for females
  • Female choice of mates
  • To take care of apparent counter-examples to
    natural selection
  • Parental Investment Theory (1960s)
  • Gametic dimorphism (sperm are small, numerous,
    and cheap eggs are large, relatively few, and
    expensive) as are other aspects of reproduction
    that often fall on females (egg sitting,
    gestation, lactation, caring for young in
    general)
  • So parental investment differs by sex

7
Scientific Explanation
  • Parental Investment Theory (1960s)
  • Gametic dimorphism
  • This difference is supposed to explain the 2
    processes that make up sexual selection.
  • Is also supposed to explain sex differences in
    temperament, behavior, and mating strategies
  • It pays males to be promiscuous and it pays
    females to be choosey
  • So it is also supposed to explain The battle
    between the sexes
  • And so-called double standards in numerous
    cultures

8
Scientific Explanation
  • Parental Investment Theory (PIT, 1960s)
  • Challenges and current status
  • From within evolutionary biology
  • If sexual selection is a force at all, its role
    is very minor (Ernst Mayr)
  • Many cases previously explained using PIT or SS
    turn out to be explicable using natural selection
  • Sperm are not cheap to produce (Richard Dawkins)
  • Gender stereotypes shape the theory and the
    observations made by those who assume it
  • Females were supposed to be monogamous but
    songbirds in film
  • Ordinary chimpanzees vs. Bonobos
  • In fact, most species spend less time courting
    and mating than many other activities
  • Evolutionary psychologists still maintain it.

9
van Fraassens account
  • Explanation is not a formal relationship (defined
    in terms of logic) between a law-like statement
    and some phenomenon
  • Many scientists and philosophers now see
    understanding rather than explanation and
    prediction as the primary goal of science
  • Explanation in science is a pragmatic
    relationship context and practice dependent
  • Why questions are asked, and regarded as
    answered, within specific scientific contexts
  • To understand them (and what will count as an
    answer) requires knowledge of the scientific
    context within which they are asked.

10
van Fraassens account
  • Reminders
  • Answers to a question such as why sex? will
    greatly vary depending on context (religious vs.
    scientific, and within different scientific
    epochs)
  • So, too, the question how did humans come into
    existence?
  • And how are humans like other animals and how
    (if at all) are they unique?
  • And why is nature uniform?

11
van Fraassens account
  • The Evolutionary Arms Game
  • Struggle for existence
  • Why diversity, enabled by sex, matters in terms
    of potential dangers and survival
  • Evolution at work
  • Antibiotic resistant viruses (TB, HIV, )
  • Early exposure and immunity

12
Review
13
Review
  • You should know
  • What Humes problem of induction is
  • What the remaining problem of induction is and
    how it applies to science
  • What narrow inductivism is
  • What Hempels new account of inductivism is
  • What the distinction is between discovery and
    justification in the philosophy of science

14
Review
  • You should know
  • What the logic of confirmation is
  • What Falsificationism is
  • What the logic of falsification is
  • Challenges to both Hempels logic of
    confirmation and Poppers logic of falsification
  • What holism is and what Duhems argument for it
    is
  • What the logic of reductio ad absurdum
    involves
  • And why Duhem says it cannot be properly used in
    science

15
Review
  • You should know
  • What normal science is according to Kuhn and
    how it is different from pre-science or
    pre-normal science
  • The relationship between a paradigm and a normal
    science research program
  • What Kuhn means by puzzle solving and how he
    uses it to describe the activities in normal
    science
  • The significant differences between Poppers
    account of scientific practice and Kuhns

16
Review
  • You should know
  • What an ad hoc hypothesis is
  • What an auxiliary assumption is
  • Cases in which the latter were clearly at work
    in apparent falsifications
  • Cases in which an added hypothesis (to take care
    of a problem) was confirmed (thus, not ad hoc)
  • Difficulties in determining, except in
    hindsight, when a hypothesis is ad hoc

17
Review
  • You should know
  • What Hempels D-N model of explanation is
  • What problems it faces
  • What van Fraassens pragmatic account of
    explanation is and how it challenges Hempels
    model
  • How questions like Why Sex? and those
    addressed in The Evolutionary Arms Race fit
    better with van Fraassens account
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