Your final paper is going to be a fairly short discussion of the article that you presented with your groups. The goal of this paper is to explore some of the ramifications of the author’s arguments and viewpoints with our understanding of sciene. To this end, your paper should accomplish two tasks.
Part 1: Summarize the view that the author of the article is advocating for. In addition, very briefly summarize the arguments/motivations for the view. For those that presented on Godfrey-Smith’s chapter on realism, simply select one of the views discussed in the chapter. And for group 4, please focus on the Barker, Kitcher.
Part 2: Explore from your own perspective, what consequences that this has for our view of what science (or the scientific method) is and/or how science should operate in our society. That is, our class has explored what we take science to be and so this part of the paper should be reflecting on what lessons the author’s discussion has for our understanding of science.
Requirements
12 point Times Roman font.
Double-spaced, 1 in margins
Approximately 3 pages. This should be evenly split between the two tasks.
You do NOT need a long introduction. Simply summarize the structure of your paper and the main claims that you will make in 3-4 sentences.
Grading rubric
The rubric is based upon 5 criteria and will be graded on a 5 point scale. A 1 means that you went above and beyond in meeting that criteria. A 2 means that you met that criteria in a satisfactory way. A 3 means that you clearly attempted to meet the criteria but there were a few deficiencies. A 4 means that while you attempted to meet the criteria, you were largely unsuccessful. A 5 means that you did not even attempt to meet the criteria.
Quality of Writing: Your paper was well-written. It was free of typos and grammatical errors. It was proof-read and well-structured.
Accuracy (part 1): Your summary of the author’s views and the arguments/motivations for those views were accurate.
Clarity and Precision (part 1): Your summary of the author’s views and the arguments/motivations for those views were clearly AND concisely expressed.
Clarity and Precision (part 2): Your discussion of the consequences for our understanding of science was clear and concise. Your thesis was clearly and concisely expressed as what your arguments for your thesis.
Relevance (part 2): Your discussion of the consequences for our understanding of science was (a) well-argued for AND (b) displayed some understanding of the discussions about the nature of science that we had throughout the semester.
