Theme 1: theory of science - Reflection

For this week’s theme of Theory of Science I prepared by reading the book The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. Then I analyzed it by answering the questions for the seminar that unfortunately didn’t occur. The theme and the readings for this week have dealt very much with philosophy, which is an uncommon subject in our education and on The Royal Institute of Technology. I think I have a mind that is very much catered to science and for example math, where you mostly have one single answer and things that can be determined and proved. So for me it was hard to read and understand Russells book about the problems of philosophy. What I learned when I read it was that there are many different views about philosophy and there are many definitions of different terms in that area. When I am reading all the blogs from the other students in the course it shows what a diverse subject this is. Even though we have answered specific questions, there are many different answers, interpretations and ways of expressing your belief. This is very different to science where if it were a math question, everybody will (hopefully) have the exact same answer.

Otherwise in terms of what I have learned from reading the other blog posts there is not much to say I think, because everyone has answered the specific questions for the seminar and not done much of their own analysis or discussion.

An interesting aspect from Russell’s book that I thought a lot about was the question of what reality is. In my opinion I think it is easy to believe that a table, as Russell talks about, is the same for everybody that sees it and is thus the reality. A table is not more than a table and equal to everyone so to speak. Therefore the notion of sense-data was interesting because everyone have their own sensations of what something is. 

Depending on where you stand when you see the table you will have a certain view of it because of the viewing angle, the light, etc. So the reality of an object can differ from person to person and is determined by the relation between the person and the object in terms of the sense-data. 

Since we haven’t had the seminar for this theme I haven’t contributed to the course in any other way than the two blog postings. I heard from a friend who took this course last year that the seminar for this theme created good interesting discussions and I understand that since, as I have discussed earlier, I think everyone have got a slightly different understanding to the concepts and terms that Russell talks about.