Natural Sciences

According to the prompt, evidence is seen as the primary basis of justification towards asserting claims, and as such, any claim without evidence can easily be rejected because there is no valid justification to support it. However, evidence is not the only variable that can give us justification, which, thus, contradicts the claim asserted in prompt. Therefore, with different ways of justifications, this leads to the knowledge issue of how do we use reason to justify a claim since we need a method of determining the validity of a claim asserted. The implications of this knowledge issue helps to elucidate how and why different conclusions are formed despite being given the same evidence, which, in turn, can lead to arguments and problems in the real world.

In the natural sciences, empirical evidence obtained through experimentation and observation is vital towards formulating a valid assertion. In biology class, when exploring the efficiency of enzymes, we use the empirical evidence of temperature and pH to explain its optimum conditions. The enzyme, pepsin, has an optimal level of efficiency towards increasing the rate of reaction it is catalyzing at a pH of 2 and temperature of 37°C since there were experiments that observed the different effects of pH and temperature on pepsin. Thus, with the empirical evidence given, we can rationalize and conclude that the best optimal conditions for pepsin are within a certain range from the results obtained from the experiments. However, in math, we can automatically assert certain claims without prior explanation of evidence. With Pythagorean triples, if two of the numbers in a set is known, such as 5 and 12, then the last number of the set is also known, 13. As such, with these two examples, the knowledge issue of how do we use reason to justify a conclusion/analysis arises since in both cases since the claim is valid, but the reason for justification is different. In contrast, the natural sciences uses inductive reasoning by analyzing specific pieces of empirical evidence from experimentation to formulate a conclusion, whereas mathematics uses deductive reasoning with axioms and postulates to verify/support certain claims. Even without the assertion of evidence, as seen in math, it is still valid due to fundamental axioms embedded in the system of mathematics. Deductive reasoning in math relies on prevalent knowledge already justified through proofs so we can automatically assume them as valid without even fully understanding it. However, this cannot always be done in the natural sciences because the methodology used relies heavily on the presence of empirical evidence in order to create a valid explanation, which is further substantiated by the scientific method. The scientific method uses experimentation to obtain empirical evidence and to replicate results, which supports the precision and accuracy of a claim, thus giving enough justification to understand that the assertion being made