Emotions in Science - Essay Example

Emotions can normally affect us on different situations and in varied ways. Our emotions can either guide or misguide us to making certain final conclusions depending on the type of task we are faced with. For example a person who got bitten by a dog while he was young may up to date associate fear when he sees a dog years later. Emotions sometimes can also be positive. This is because due to emotions, an individual can develop selective evidence that ultimately benefit their point of view (Campbell, 2002, pp234). At other times. Emotions are neither negative nor positive. This mainly occurs when we lay our fundamental beliefs on matters of the heart rather than using brains to make our conclusions. This type of emotion provides us with strength to engage in intellectual activities. Knowledge is learning or studying something new a person didn’t know before.knowldge and its power suppresses normal schooling as it comes through a very long process of experiences (Campbell, 2002, pp204). Though schooling is educational, it cannot give someone an opportunity to experience knowledge that is experienced when an individual takes on a journey to explore new things. Guided by emotions, an individual tend to dwell deep on a matter and learn more than he or she can have a chance to learn more than ever, thus opening more avenues there were never there before. With emotions facilitating the search of knowledge an individual will have a chance to learn a broader spectrum of things. Using emotions and the art is a trustworthy action. In history, every story is related to emotions. Being compilations of stories from different personas, no one can stand and clearly say what the truth in history is. No one can certify whether historical accounts are true or not. In respect to this fact, the pursuit of knowledge in history then is said to be completely emotional experience (Campbell, 2002, pp134). History, involves evidence used, where it was made, whom it was made by and for what reason. History as a way of knowing the past happenings does not only help us to understand more on what is being researched, but also creates insight into the time period. Sometimes when an individual acts emotionally, his or her rationality is very weak thus allowing an opportunity for history misconstruction. Emotions can immensely affect history. For example, during the trial of David Irving versus Dr. Deborah, and Penguin publishers. Irving was accused to be anti-Semite and a racist, but he strongly resented the accusations saying that the holocaust did not happen. During his trial, he keenly represented concrete evidence showing that the holocaust did not happen. In the process of his trial, it was reported that he sang a racist song to his younger daughter. From that evidence it was confirmed that he was biased due to his emotions towards the Jewish race. His racist views caused him to see the information in a certain way and also affected his reasoning (Campbell, 2002, pp254). Though this was proved against him, Irving consistently claimed that gas chambers were for delousing and not for killing humans. He consistently based his claim on a research carried by another doctor. Though it was later discredited, Irving stuck on it to support his claim. This is an example to purely show that in some cases, emotions may not be the best thing to trust in history as an area of knowledge as it can hugely affect our perception of things (Campbell, 2002, pp364). Emotions are mostly biological responses with both cognitive and behavioral elements. People gain knowledge from observations and experiences (Campbell, 2002, pp194). In school, students learn the basics of mathematics and how to apply them. Sometimes emotions lead us to more improbable opportunities under the expense of more probable opportunities. For example, when presented with two games of luck, where in the first one an individual has a chance to win ten million pounds and in the second occasion, the individual has a chance to win ten thousand dollars. For the first opportunity, the probability to win ten million dollars is one out of ten million. For the second opportunity, the individual chance to win is one out of ten thousand. But where do majority individuals play in? From the mathematics knowledge, the chances to win the second game are ten times bigger than winning the first. However despite this fact majority of individuals emotions lead them to play the first game on in most cases. This shows how emotions can lead individual into making mistakes. This secondly support that emotions is not the best thing to trust in history. People gamble mainly because of high jackpot and the thought of better life after winning. All these alters our rational thinking .for example in 1913, in Monte Carlo casino, there happened a very interesting scenario. On a roulette table, the ball had landed twenty times in a row in a black chamber already. This made a lot of people to bet their money on the red ball as they expected a change. Their emotions led them to think that it was very impossible for the ball to land on black again in the next round. Unfortunately for them, the ball landed on black again. On the twenty seventh round, the ball finally landed on red. But by then all the players had lost all their money. The players made a great mistake to rely on their emotions (Campbell, 2002, pp54). They were filled with anger and distress as they lost all the previous rounds as they were full of hope to win the money. What they forgot to think of in this case is that the ball had no memory of where it was before. Their emotions blindfolded them, thus all failed to realize that the ball could roll either way. Emotions sometimes lead people to making decisions that are inaccurate thus causing them to lose fortunes. From the above examples, we can see that the difficulty with emotions is that they are never transparent, and that they are resistant to change. They are a powerful tool and the driving forces behind our lives, because we always tend to reason about our actions but only the ways we feel at the end of it indicate whether we did a moral thing or not (Campbell, 2002, pp414). Though this is true; emotions always need to be understood and harnessed before they can be counted on as productive motivations. So according to historical examples above we can say that the point in which we can trust our emotions is the point in which they do not elude our understanding because at that point we know we are capable of controlling them. Is there room for emotions in science e.g. When carrying out scientific research? Many scientist especially geologist are for the support that scientist should only dwell on findings and research facts rather than allowing emotions to influence their work (Campbell, 2002, pp152). To some extent it is true that scientific research and findings should be recorded as the results indicate; but to the biochemist, they believe that emotions should be considered in daily research work due to the nature of their work that deals directly with the feelings and welfare of human beings. On whether there is room for emotions in science especially when carrying out scientific research, to my opinion, emotions have huge influence on the scientific research carried out on daily basis. When biochemists carry out their research, they mainly concentrate on the effect of disease on people (Campbell, 2002, pp167). In their career, they are mainly concerned by how to protect people welfare by preventing diseases. This makes their job very emotional, their research work are full of emotions. For example, imagine a biochemist carrying out a research which its main end goal is to help repair individual nerve damage? Of course this research will be full of emotions as the task itself has an immensely emotional end goal. In this view then, emotions have room in scientific research. However, on the other hand, when we compare the work and research carried out by geologist, the scenario is very different. Geologist research does not directly involve interacting with people apart from their colleagues. Their research mainly focuses on how to accurately predict earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis (Campbell, 2002, pp317). In fact they never witness the feelings of human beings directly in their job. This nature of their work, has no emotional attachment, thus in such a research there is no room for emotions. Conclusions Though we should examine our emotions, they should not be trusted in place of actual knowledge. We can trust our emotions only when we know they line up perfectly with what we think are the facts (Campbell, 2002, pp210). But even then, we should be skeptical of them. It is always acceptable to grieve a genuine loss, but unacceptable to grieve forever. We can never fully trust our emotions in the pursuit of emotions. Emotions are reactions to knowledge, they are not themselves sources of knowledge, thus they usually have a bad habit of clouding objective judgements.The only emotions we can trust in the pursuit of knowledge are reticence,caution,and suspicion, and these are much viewpoints as they are emotions. Works Cited Campbell, Rebecca. Emotionally Involved: The Impact of Researching Rape. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print. Read More