Tolman suspected that rats would build mental maps of the maze as they investigated it, forming a mental picture of the layout of the maze. He wanted to know how rats successfully navigate their surroundings - for example, a maze containing a hidden reward. Most of us have probably wondered how other animals think and experience the world (e.g, is Fido really happy to see me or does he just want a treat?) - but can that curiosity be satisfied by science? After all, how could we ever test an idea about how another animal thinks? In the 1940s, psychologist Edward Tolman investigated a related question using the methods of science. But how would a less familiar scientific investigation - one that wouldn’t show up in a high school science textbook - measure up against the Science Checklist? To find out, we’ll look at an example from the field of psychology… Beyond the prototype: Animal psychology Ernest Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus, for example, satisfied those characteristics quite neatly. While not all scientific investigations line up perfectly with the Science Checklist, science, as an endeavor, strives to embody these features. We’ve seen that scientific research generally meets a set of key characteristics: it focuses on improving our understanding of the natural world, works with testable ideas that can be verified with evidence, relies on the scientific community, inspires ongoing research, and is performed by people who behave scientifically.
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