What+is+Science+V2

Since the dawn of time humans have been using their brains to solve obstacles that impede their day to day progress. Whether it was making stone tools or using a stick to make a bow, or even the discovery of fire, HUMANS HAVE always had a thirst for knowledge that is not only instinctive but plays well with our curiosity. As time progressed we honed our abilities to make tools, farm, and do the most tangible tasks, but still there was that curious thirst of “what is next” that kept the human mind turning and churning. That thirst eventually evolved into what we know today as science. Science is what we know, but it is not that simple, if it was it would not be science! It is much more complex and theoretical, but yet it is almost too simple to define. Science is defined by Webster to have four basic definitions; the state of knowing, a department of systemized knowledge as an object of study, knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method, and a system reconciling practical ends with scientific laws. Science is all of these and more. Science could be studying occurrences and events to predict future ones or a way of increasing human knowledge to improve lives. Science is observing facts in the world around us and trying to derive a theory to define them. Science attempts to transcend the observations humans make and predict the future using patterns.

The foundation to all modern science is mathematics. Mathematics is a way to express things that are tangible, such as a group of rocks, and organize them neatly and precisely for example: our ancestors would to look at a group of rocks and sticks and say three rocks, two sticks, and four pieces of twine that means we can make two hammers. Although mathematics is actually much more complex, early people started using math from logic. Ironically, Aristotle claimed to have invented logic but, unfortunately for him, that does not make sense logically. So does all of this mean that science is math? Math is just in fact the foundation upon which science but science extends far past that point, like a skyscraper.

If science is math, and math is logic, then science is logic. That makes perfect sense, right? Wrong, science is not logic if you use a simple example brought up in class. How can you explain condensation around a glass? Logically you would assume that there were holes in the glass but there are not. That being said that does not mean using logic is not a form of science, it is, and in fact that’s exactly how science was developed. Science, by assumption, is ever changing. What we know today is different from what we knew yesterday, and tomorrow we may learn that what we thought was correct was actually incorrect all along. The scientific method is just a generalized form of logic that can be applied most nearly any problem in life. Science lives in the here and now, and that brings up a paradox. If science from yesterday is not science how can we be sure that what we know today is in fact science? The answer is simple, we cannot. Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1942, it was scientific fact that the earth was flat, but now we know that the earth is spherical. How could something that was fact become false? Again, the composition of science is always changing thus there is a difference between a widely believed fact and absolute truth. Fact is something that is widely accepted to be true at the time, but if something comes along that makes more sense, the previous idea is no longer regarded as true and is booted out the window.

Now the reason people need the ability to perform science is to explain things and solve questions that without science would be impossible to answer completely. In theory, science is much like religion. Both are ideas, they both help guide the way we live and give us answers to things otherwise unexplainable, but science turns away from religion at one crucial point, science has the ability to change and evolve to fit new evidence without losing its integrity, while religion cannot usually perform change. That is why occasionally science and religion are seen as two opposing forces because one is conservative and one is progressive. Religion does change but chooses to do it very slowly with the exception of a few cases, mostly after public outcry. Ironically the church is the one that helped further the progressiveness of science for awhile. With the establishments of universities in Spain, France, Italy, etc., the church pushed science forward, helping to create great scientists such as Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus worked for the church doing science for awhile until he theories contradicted the church. Galileo was close friends with Pope Urban VIII, until the Pope caved into conservative pressure against Galileo’s heliocentric views. That’s why science is so great; it changed scientists from being supported by the church to being declared as heretics. Similarly, science is now viewed as the opposite of the arts, such as painting, dance, and music. Education in modern America tends to divide science from the humanities, but past experiences showed us how intertwined they are. In World War II, both sides were creating an atomic bomb. The atomic bomb research was the very forefront of scientific discovery at the time and brought many moral concerns with it. In many schools, they are cutting the so called arts to make way for science. The ironic thing is that what is science but one of the most pure art forms of all? Neils Bohr realized, in the 1920s, while working on the structure of the atom, “that the invisible world of the electron was essentially a cubist world.” Cubist world refers to the depictions made popular by Pablo Picasso’s painting style. A scientist does not do science; he practices science, in the same way a doctor doesn’t do medicine but rather practices medicine. It’s all in effort to find the next step, to move closer to the unobtainable absolute truth. Artists during the Renaissance hoped to gain higher knowledge through their works. We may never reach it but as long as there are scientists to practice the art and teachers willing to pass on that knowledge then we will ever slowly move towards our limit.

Now some of the biggest confusion about science comes in the difference between science and technology. Technology is the application of science to life in its basic form. There are that would argue, “You do not need to be scientific to invent something you just need to know that it works; not why it works.” To that I offer a counter point: To know how something works is in fact a use of one’s ability to perform basic logic. The idea and concept of science began with the use of logic and inferences so that means technology must be a product of a science. This does not mean it is a product of the current science but somewhere along the lines the tools necessary to create that piece of technology had its roots in science. Technology itself has huge impacts on society, a lot more than raw science does. With the invention of interchangeable parts by Eli Whitney Jr. the idea of mass production was introduced. That is a huge impact on society even though it was not directly introduced by science; Eli must have been thinking in a way similar to how scientists use the scientific method, step by step, what if, trial and error, and etcetera. So my answer to the question is technology science is yes because if you dig deep enough back to the origin of a piece of technology you will find a crucial scientific influence that made that technology possible. Scientists observe the world around them and try to figure it out. Kepler wanted to figure out why the Earth revolved around the sun. Newton wanted to find what made the apple fall on his head (supposedly). They took their observances and made theories. These theories didn’t work the first time. They probably didn’t work until many revisions later, but they defined the world around them. Sheldon Gottlieb said at the Harbinger symposium that “scientific theories are derived from facts” and not the other way around.

What is science? Can any of this really be considered the true definition of science? Can we say science is a group of ideas that come together to make a more understandable and more efficient single answer? Is science just a word we use to explain a set of abstract ideas that we group together to make it more understandable to every day humans? All these answers fit in some way or another, but simply science boils down to one simple statement. You have an idea which seems to be knowledgeable, but maybe not perfect, then you take another idea with similar ideas, but they differ on some aspects. Now you blend them up all together, then take the good and exclude the bad and in the end you now have science. Science is creating/finding a theory that as a general rule can be applied to life and make it life easier and more efficient, or explain why something happens.