What is science? Responses from our last class.
sci·ence ( P ) Pronunciation
Key (sns)
n.
1. a. The observation, identification, description, experimental
investigation,
and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
b. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena.
c. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.
2. Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I've got packing
a suitcase
down to a science.
3. An activity that appears to require study and method: the
science of
purchasing.
4. Knowledge, especially that gained through experience.
5. Science Christian Science.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=science
Natural phenomenon
Social science
Natural science
food science, culinary science,
investigation - using science
testing, controlling, manipulation
processes
Scientists don't define science.
Science has literacy
describe and understand the nature of the universe
the scientific method is post Bacon, what was it before - Aristotle?
philosophy of how to go about science = the scientific method.
Could we have a working definition. Can a concept be too nebulous
to haave an effective definition?
But what really is science?
The study of the basic philosophies
or ideologies of scientists is very difficult because they
are rarely articulated. They largely consist of silent assumptions
that are taken so completely for grated that they are never
mentioned. The historian of biology encourners some of his
greatest difficulties when trying to ferret out such silent
assumptions; and anyone who attempts to questin these "eternal
truths" encounters formidable resistance.
Mayr, Ernst 1982. The Growth of Biological Thought, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA
Surprising new forms of collective
behavior arise from what appear to be sponstaneous apperances
of increasing levels of complexity, whether at the physical,
chemical, biological, or symbolic levels. This strikes me
as the principal unifying theme that runs throught all we
know, or think we know, about the world around us.
McNeill, William H. 1998. History and the Scientific Worldview. History
and Theory, 37 (1):1-14
Here is what I see
as different.
I think that in modern society we accept the noun
part of science to readily as science. - the book of facts- the knowledge
base. What we don't see is the ACTIVE process.
-
 H.
H. Baur models different "types" of science in the figure
shown at right: (click image to enlarge)
- Karl Popper summarizes the idea of
a good scientific "model" in
this way:
1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications,
for nearly every theory-if we look for confirmations.
2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky
predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in
question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with
the theory-an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it
forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the
better it
is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific.
Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think)
but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify
it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees
of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation,
than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result
of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can
be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the
theory.
(I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence")
7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still
upheld by their admirers-for example by introducing ad hoc some
auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in
such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always
possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price
of destroying,
or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such
a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or
a "conventionalist stratagem".
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific
status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability,
or testability.
- Other Models of Science
- Del Ratzsch (in R. T. Wright, Biology through the eyes
of faith) - a tripartite model
- DATA
- ARE EMPIRICAL - GATHERED THROUGH THE SENSES
A. OBSERVATIONS
B. MEASUREMENTS
C. EXPERIMENTATION
- THEORIES
- ARE THE GOAL OF SCIENCE: TO DEVELOP SOME RATIONAL
AND RELIABLE EXPLANATIONS OF THE WAY THE CREATION WORKS
- Components of a good Theory
A.Objectivity
B. Rationality
C. Generality
 *
(traditionally curiosity » observation » hypothesis formulation
based upon observed pattern» hypothesis testing » retesting
or define theory which is called the hypothetico-deductive method)
- SHAPING PRINCIPLES
ARE THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS VALUES AND ASSUMPTIONS THAT WE
BRING TO THE PROCESS OF SCIENCE. (WORLDVIEW)
A. CULTURE
B. BELIEFS
C. INTUITION
Science has three major objectives according to biologist F. Ayala
(1968) (In: Mayer, E. 1982. The growth of biological thought.
Harvard Univ Press. Cambridge, MA)
- to seek to organize knowledge in a systematic way, endeavoring
to discover patterns of relationship among phenomena and processes,
- to strive to provide explanations
for the occurrence of events and
- to propose explanatory hypotheses that must
be testable, that is accessible to the possibility of rejection. More
broadly, science attempts to subsume the vast diversity of
the phenomena
and processes of nature under a much smaller number of explanatory
principles.
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