What Is Science - Class Notes
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What is

     Science is the concerted human effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works,

….. with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding.

Science is done through observation of natural phenomena, and/or through experimentation that tries to simulate natural processes under controlled conditions.

Two types of science - not always separate from one another...

1. Observational Science

• An ecologist observing the territorial behaviors of bluebirds and

• a geologist examining the distribution of fossils in an outcrop

• An astrophysicist photographing distant galaxies to determine the type galaxies and objects within galaxies.

• and a climatologist sifting data from weather balloons on weather patterns

All observationl scientists are making observations in order to find patterns in natural phenomena.

2. Experimental Science

• A chemist observes the rates of one chemical reaction at a variety of temperatures to see what patterns emerge.

• A nuclear physicist records the results of bombarding a particular kind of matter with neutrons in order to see what patterns are present.

• Finally a Biologist observing the reaction of a particular tissue to various stimulants is likewise experimenting to find patterns.

All these scientists are experimenting in order to detect patterns in nature.

 

Generally there are two things in common amongst all scientists. They are:

1. Making and recording observations of nature, or of simulations of nature, in order to learn more about how nature, in the broadest sense, works.

2. Showing that old ideas (the ideas of scientists a century ago or perhaps just a year ago) are wrong and that, instead, new ideas may better explain nature.

Ref: Dr. Bruce Railsback, Department of Geology, University of Georgia

 

What Science Isn't

1. Science Isn't Art

• Art is the attempt to express an individual's feelings or ideas about something in a way that others find beautiful, graceful, or at least aesthetically satisfying. Thus art is very individualistic.

• Science is the attempt to reach demonstrable, replicable, conclusions about the natural world (and social science is the corresponding attempt to reach demonstrable conclusions about the social or human world).

 

2. Science is not Technology:

• Science doesn't make things. Scientists generate knowledge.

• Engineers use scientific knowledge to generate technology.

 

3. Science isn't Truth and Science isn't certainty:

• Most scientists seek Truth; they don't know or generate Truth.

• Scientists use evidence to propose and test theories, knowing that future evidence may cause refinement, revision, or even rejection of today's theories

 

4. Science isn't a religion or a belief system:

• Science and belief systems are very different, in what they try to do and in the approaches they use to accomplish their goals.

• Science seeks to explain the origin, nature, and processes of the physically detectable universe.

• Science is an activity where the underlying assumptions are tested and retested.

Ref: Dr. Bruce Railsback, Department of Geology, University of Georgia

Sheldon F. Gottlieb, Ph.D. Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Alabama

 

Science Asks Three Basic Questions

What's there?

• The astronaut picking up rocks on the moon, the nuclear physicist bombarding atoms, the marine biologist describing a newly discovered species, the paleontologist digging in promising strata, are all seeking to find out, "What's there?"

 

How does it work?

• A geologist comparing the effects of time on moon rocks to the effects of time on earth rocks, the nuclear physicist observing the behavior of particles, the marine biologist observing whales swimming, and the paleontologist studying the locomotion of an extinct dinosaur, "How does it work?"

 

How did it come to be this way?

• Each of these scientists tries to reconstruct the histories of their objects of study. Whether these objects are rocks, elementary particles, marine organisms, or fossils, scientists are asking, "How did it come to be this way?"

 

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