NS4H Honors Assignments, Fall 2002

• Honors Assignment 1: The fictional detective, Sherlock Homes, was made famous by Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes was known for his powers of deduction. Please visit
  
  http://www.thinkingcoach.com/holmes/holmesdetail.php
  
  and read the exchange between Holmes and his faithful partner Dr. Watson from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. Does Holmes use inductive or deductive logic when determining the nature of the person under observation? Explain.
  

• Honors Assignment 2: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin A. Abbott, A Square, 1884, may be viewed in an electronic version at
  
  http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/flatland/
  
  You will want to read the first few sections to get the flavor of this allegory. Then jump ahead to section 15, "Concerning a Stranger from Spaceland," and explain how the author, a Square, perceives the Stranger, and builds a model of what he may be like from his observations. Then write a paragraph about how we might try to explain our three-dimensional universe expanding into four-dimensional space. (Recall my demonstration using a balloon with dots on its surface.) (due Monday, 23 Sept 2002)

• Honors Assignment 3: In the September 11, 2002 issue of Newsweek, an Argument by Analogy is made using an example from physical science that might be spectacularly inappropriate. Read the article at
  
  http://www.msnbc.com/news/801476.asp (yes, it is the one with you-know-who on a horse)
  
  and examine the argument that uses a supernova as an analogy. You can click to jump down to the Complete Story, then scroll down past some Talk forms to find the rest of the article on the page. You will probably need to find out how supernovas work by doing a little digging on the web. (I found a really good site in about two minutes, courtesy of an agency of NASA.) Write a paragraph or two on how well this analogy works and bring it to class for credit and discussion. Be sure to cite your sources. [Hint: Distinguish between how a supernova forms when a star of suitable mass goes dark in its core, and a supernova remnant that exists much later.] (due Monday, 23 Sept 2002)
  
  
• Term Paper Topics: I have recommended that the Honors Class should concentrate on the area of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) for term paper topics. CAM is threatening to go mainstream, both for possible carreer choices and for government funding, in spite of a lack of scientific foundation for most of the claims of CAM. Issues are not just of science, but also of politics and individual belief systems. For background see:
  • The White House Report on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, an analysis of this report may be found at the Quackwatch website.
  • The AAAS has suggested that young scientists look at careers in CAM. See the link originally referenced on this site under Hot Off the Web.
    
    
• Honors Assignment 4. In Moore chapter 4, Application 4.1, you are asked to generate hypotheses regarding Preacher Explodes. That is pretty hard to do, given that we have no background in the subject of Spontaneous Human Combustion. Consider, if you will, the following two websites: one by a well-known skeptical writer, the other from the opposing camp. Read both accounts, then generate a list of hypotheses from this material. We will evaluate these hypotheses using the methods of Hypothetical Reasoning as we learn more about the hypothetico-deductive method.
  
  http://www.csicop.org/si/9611/shc.html
  http://www.alternativescience.com/spontaneous-human-combustion-burning-issue.htm
  
  Be alert. The writer of the Alternative Science website is no push-over. He is very good at constructing compelling arguments. (due Friday, November 8, 2002)
  
  
• Honors Assignment 5. Moore Chapter 4 has some problems involving the use of the term Null Hypothesis. Read the description at the following web site
  
  Don't Believe in the Null Hypothesis? by Chong Ho Yu, Ph.D.
  
  then rewrite the argument about fibromyalgia given on page 145 of Moore's book. You may also wish to consult the Philosophy Pages about modus tollens. There appears to be a violation of Transposition in the argument as it appears. [Hint: Ignore the references to The Null Hypothesis, and concentrate on the Statement "q will be true if and only if p is true, where p is the disease and q the results from the test." ] (due Friday, November 8, 2002)
  
  
• Honors Assignment 6. It is fashionable in some quarters to treat Science as just another belief system which we can choose or not when interpreting how the world works. Read the editorial in the December 2002 issue of Scientific American, In Science We Trust. Then write a one or two page paper contrasting the self-correcting nature of science with that of "alternative" belief systems which generally start with an ideology, then show how the world is explained by it. If you feel that this is an unfair characterization, then defend that point of view. Choose at least one ideology with which to make your contrast. (Due Wednesday, December 9, 2002.)