1. Scientific Method 1
1 MA English Philology
Barbara Konat
Department of Epistemology and Cognitive Sciences
Faculty of Social Sciences
2013

2. Technical information:
How do I get the credit for the course?
Participation – min. 80%. In groups, prepare and present your
own research project on the poster session (last
class:12.06.2013).
Where I can find the course presentations, syllabus and
other information?
http://amu.academia.edu/BarbaraKonat/
www.slideshare.net/barbarakonat
Duty hours: Friday, contact me.
What if I have more questions?
bkonat@amu.edu.pl.

3. About me
Philosopher, PhD Dissertation in the Methodology of Linguistics
(Cognitive vs. Generative linguistics).
Faculty of Social Sciences (Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, Culture
studies).
Institute of Philosophy. Department of Epistemology and Cognitive
Sciences
I am also interested in: corpus linguistics, cognitive liguististics, logic.

4. Course structure
Module 1 - Introduction (classes 1-3)
scientific method, empirical science, empirical linguistics,
research proccess, operationalization, ethics in research.
Module 2 – The structure of scientific article (classes 4-6)
reading an article in empirical linguistics, experiment and
observation.
Module 3 – Research plan preparation (classes 7-11)
Final - Poster session and oral presentations of research
plans.
(more in syllabus: http://amu.academia.edu/BarbaraKonat)

5. At the end of this course…
You will know the difference:
- Between scientific method and intuition.
- Between experiment and observation.
You will be able to:
- Read an scientific article and analyze it on the meta-level.
- Prepare your own research plan.

6. Exercise 1 – Nice to meet you
Prepare 2 minutes presentation, answering the following questions:
1. Why do I study English Philology?
2. What do I want to learn in SciMet classes?
3. What is the subject of my MA thesis?
You have 5 minutes preparation time.
Remember to take notes for your presentation.
Image by lumaxart
(EbonyG00052_LuMaxArt) [CC-BY-SA-2.0
via Wikimedia Commons.

7. KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE
Image by Smallbones (Own work) [CC0],
via Wikimedia Commons

8. Knowledge
„Not so much what we know as how we know it.”
(Babbie, 2010)

9. The world is round
Image from: http://onlyhdwallpapers.com Inspired by Terry Pratchett’s „Discworld” book series.

10. Dark side of the moon is cold
By Tomruen [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

11. How do you know?
Have you been to the space and watched
the Earth from the distance?
Have you been to the dark side of the moon
lately?

12. Exercise 2: The art of knowing
Donald Henry Rumsfeld (born July 9, 1932)
is an American politician and
businessman. Rumsfeld served as the
13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to
1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as
the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to
2006 under President George W. Bush.
From: Wikipedia.
This image is a work of a U.S. military or Department of Defense employee, taken or made
as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the
image is in the public domain.

13. Exercise 2: The art of knowing
“Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns."
There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns.
That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But
there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know
we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this
information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the
situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And
each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different
way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does
not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always,
when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end
up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.”
Rumsfeld, NATO Headquartes, June 6, 2002 - from Wikiquotes.

14. How do we know: tradition
Tenacity (tradition):
people will clinge to an idea simply
because it seems to be common
sense.

15. How do we know: authority
1. We do well to trust the judgment of a
certain person, who has the special training,
expertise, and credentials in a given matter,
especially in the face of controversy.
2. But what about the authority of experts
speaking outside their field of expertise?
The Thinker and his Wife
Cernavoda, Karanovo Culture 5000 BC.

16. SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

17. Scientific method
What sets science apart, is its dependence on
intersubjective verification, the possibility that
knowledge can be empirically tested by different
researchers.
Keywords:
Intersubjective
Verification
Replicability

18. Exercise 3: Is language science
possible?
Patricia Smith Churchland Avram Noam Chomsky is an
is a Canadian-American philosopher American linguist, philosopher, cognitive
noted for her contributions to scientist, logician,historian, political critic,
neurophilosophy and activist. From Wikipedia
and the philosophy of mind
From Wikipedia
Exercise: Watch the movie. Take notes, compare their arguments, say
what you think

19. Language science - how do you
collect the data?
Experiment, observation or native speaker
intuition?
Psycholinguistic view:
Monica Gonzales-Marquez.

20. A Lion’s Tale
Lion - Rostock Zoo
Source Wikimedia AuthorEuro-t-guide.com

21. Language science - how do you
collect the data?
„ Clearly asking a lion how he communicates,
would be fruitless. What would you need to
do, is to arrange a controlled circumstances
under which you could record his
vocalizations in response to the situations
you construct and whose meaning you do
understand.”
Monica Gonzales-Marquez.

22. ERRORS IN INQUIRY
Image by: By Arodichevski (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia
Commons

23. Innacurate observation
What is the color of the doorknob, outside this
room?
CONCIOUS/UNCONSIOUS observation
Measuremenst

24. Overgeneralization
Few similar events provide evidence of a
general pattern.
Imagine you are a reporter covering an animal-
rights demonstration. 3/3000?
Keywords: representativeness, sample
Photo by Andrew Selman (Own
work) [GFDL
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.ht
ml), CC-BY-SA-3.0 CC-BY-2.5
via Wikimedia Commons

25. Selective observation
We tend to focus on future events and situations
that fit the pattern, and we tend to ignore
those that do not.
Racial and ethnic prejudice!

26. Illogical reasoning
The gambler’s fallacy

27. Somewhere in science….
interdisciplinary research
Picture from:
http://researchinprogress.tumblr.com

28. Keywords to remember
Knowledge
Intersubjective
Verification
Replicability
Experiment
Observation
Intuition
Representativeness
Sample

29. Thank you!
How do I get the credit for the course?
In groups, prepare and present your own research project on
the poster session (last class:12.06.2013).
Where I can find the course presentations, syllabus and
other information?
http://amu.academia.edu/BarbaraKonat/
www.slideshare.com
Duty hours: Friday, contact me.
What if I have more questions?
bkonat@amu.edu.pl, or today after classes (we finish 15 min
earlier today).

30. This lecture is based on:
Babbie, E. R. (2011). The practice of social
research / Earl R. Babbie. Belmont, Calif:
Wadsworth Publishing Co.