Question

In the context of science, according to the passage, the interaction of dogmatic beliefs and critical attitude can be best described as:

(2006)

• A. A duel between two warriors in which one has to die.
• B. The effect of a chisel on a marble stone while making a sculpture.
• C. The feedstock (natural gas) in fertilizer industry being transformed into fertilizers.
• D. A predator killing its prey.
• E. The effect of fertilizers on a sapling.

Answer 1

The correct option is C The feedstock (natural gas) in fertilizer industry being transformed into fertilizers.

Option: (c)

If we look at the idea conveyed by the author in the third paragraph, he says that the critical attitude is not so much opposed to the dogmatic attitude as super-imposed upon it. A critical attitude needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically. Option (c) very well conveys this idea by talking of feedstock in a fertilizer industry which serves as raw material and gets transformed into fertilizers.

Para 1:

· Our propensities to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking.

· Events which do not yield to these attempts, we are inclined to treat as kind of 'background noise'.

· This dogmatism is to some extent necessary.

· It allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations.

Para 2:

· Dogmatic behavior is indicative of strong belief.

· Critical attitude is indicative of a weak belief.

· Hume's theory: strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus always grow with experience and always be greater in less primitive persons.

· But dogmatic thinking sometimes creates an attitude of caution and criticism rather than that of dogmatism.

Para 3:

· Distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking brings us right back to the central problem.

· Dogmatic attitude: related to tendency to verify our laws and schemata by seeking to apply them and confirm them, even to the point of neglecting refutations.

· Critical attitude: readiness to change them-to test them; to refute them; to falsify them if possible.

· Critical attitude: can be called the scientific attitude

· Dogmatic attitude: can be called the pseudo-scientific/pre-scientific attitude

· This primitivity also has its logical aspect.

· Critical attitude can be super-imposed on the dogmatic attitude because it needs for its raw material, as it were, theories or beliefs which are held more or less dogmatically.

Para 4:

· Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

· Scientific tradition can be distinguished from pre-scientific tradition in having two layers.

o It passes on its theories, but also passes on a critical attitude towards them.

o Theories passed on, not as dogmas but rather with the challenge to discuss them and improve upon them.

Para 5:

· Critical attitude is the attitude of reasonableness, of rationality.

· Before a theory has refuted, we can never know in what way it may have to be modified.