Introduction
Every person has a perception of what is a good or bad theory. Van Cleave (2016) argues that human beings are naturally misguided and misinformed when it comes to scientific theories. One of the misconceptions, as highlighted by the author, is that when something is stated to be a scientific theory, it is believed to be uncertain.
Discussion
The other misconception is that a hypothesis backed by evidence stands as law (Van Cleave, 2016). To avoid further misinformation about theories, Van Cleave (2016) gives the characteristics of a good theory. A good theory should be logical, consistent, and simple to understand. Any theory that has such characteristics becomes easy for a person to comprehend. Properly understood scientific theories reduce chances of wrong perceptions. Therefore, it is cruicial for a scientific theory to be logical, consistent, and simple for ease application and interpretation.
Conjunction Fallacy
The human mind learns by tracing daily patterns of people and psychologically linking them with certain personalities. For instance, the human mind psychologically links a person who is cautious about diet and maintaining body fitness to fitness instructor. Van Cleave (2016) explains how such automation of the mind affects solving probability questions. The author gives an example that engages a reader in identifying a mistake and later on helping a reader solve it. The mistake committed is what he terms as a conjunctive fallacy.
Conclusion
Van Cleave explains that such a fallacy occurs since the mind naturally substitutes the question for representativeness for probability hence answering a probability question wrongly (Van Cleave, 2016, p.176). Personally, I have often judged that women leaders are all likely to be feminists. Using the conjunctive fallacy approach, it is outright that my perception was wrong.
Reference
Van Cleave, M. (2016). Introduction to logic and critical thinking. Lansing Community College.