Which one is more important to learn in a science class? Conecptual knowledge or procedural knowledge?

Question

I think that both are important. But do I need to distinguish between them? If so, how are they related? Further, any standard strategy to learn?

Answer 1

Ha -- you've asked the question that has plagued all great minds.

It's hard to distinguish between theory and procedure because, at some point, a theoretical assumption is made and from that assumption, procedure is created.

Asking when science becomes procedure-based and not theory-based has never been answered. Some scientists proposed that the answer lies in instruments. If you can observe x with your eye, you're following a procedure BUT if you must observe it with techy-instruments then it's conceptual. Which raises many questions like: well, what if the practitioner has poor eyesight? Okay, so we'll allow glasses because they're simply. But aren't microscopes glasses? But we interpret what we see through a microscope more than we interpret what we see through glasses.

Hume's Problem of Induction kind of embodies this dilemma. At some point, everything is induction and if it's inductive then it's theory-based/concept-based/assumed and is that really science? Suppose it is science -- how do we draw the line between actual science and false science since everything is based on assumption anyway?

En sum: maybe it's a trick question because THAT has plagued the 20th century philosophers and scientists so much that there were actual scholarly wars over the subjects. There's a whole era dedicated to this unsolveable question.

Answer 2

Depends on the science class. If it's physics, conceptual knowledge is far more important. If it's chemistry, you could cause a lot of problems if you weren't on the up-and-up with your procedural knowledge.

Answer 3

It's an apples - oranges comparison: you need both. But the first thing to learn is the theory of theories: you cannot prove a theory to be true, but you may be able to demonstrate that it is false. You try a theory in many situations, and if you discover a case where it gives a wrong answer, you change it. Eventually you may get it right. But no irrefutable theory can predict anything.

Answer 4

i also think that both are important. but learning conceptual knowledge just for the sake of it it doesn't seem very useful to me. in my opinion conceptual knowledge is to be taught only in order to understand the basis on procedural knowledge. i have always preferred to concentrate more on practical aspects