what+is+this+...science?

What is //this// science? Science has meant different things for different people through the generations. To understand where science is today, we have to look at the earlier roles that science has played. At its surface, science is a pattern or connection made to make sense of the observations seen in nature. However, this is not always well received by society as science has not always been analogous with being logical. Many of the earliest scientists like Galileo and Copernicus had a critical and inquiring spirit, which allowed them to halt the accepted explanations at the time and look at the evidence. As he peered through his telescope, Galileo saw the phases of Venus and verified Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of the solar system. This was obviously a threat to the Church, the leading institution for gathering and dictating knowledge. Being scientific during that era was not acknowledged nor was the research scholarly. While in a different time period, Darwin was challenging the conventional idea of man’s origins. Based upon his travel around the coastline of South America, he proposed the idea of evolution through natural selection. Although not immediately accepted, it would later be confirmed by Mendel’s work with genetics. In retrospect, we see that scientific knowledge had not always been as lofty as it is today. It was rather unappealing to be a scientist having to face considerable criticism and even insult. However, against all the upheaval, there is an underlying theme that unifies all scientists. Being a scientist means to understand the world at a level that is based solely upon verifiable facts. They have an insight into nature that allows them to make connections between many observations and produce a theory that can uphold repeated trials. Their concepts seem to be ahead of their time only to be drawn from keen interpretation. Science would eventually catch up and back up these interpretations of observations with facts from experimentation. In inspecting science today, we automatically think of technology. In a pragmatic sense, yes technology is basically science. The two are knit so tightly that we cannot speak of one without the other. However, there is a fundamental difference. Science exists, and technology is created. People have utilized science as a way to have more control in life. Take for example, research done in quantum mechanics have made strides in developing better performing computers. Modern physics, however, has also seen its discoveries in the form of nuclear weapons. One way or another, having understanding in these finer levels of science, we can “create” (or destroy) more in the world. We make new scientific discoveries and then manipulate that knowledge into something material that we can use. Simply knowing is never enough if we cannot apply that knowledge to something else. Society has always taken advantage of science in that it opens doors to new technology. Science started that way, but at the same time, with technology as the manifestation of the application of science, the science aspect has branched off and steered towards more abstract understanding. It has evolved to become an understanding of the underpinnings of everything that happens. To really know science will be to have conquered a conceptual law of the universe. I believe, however, this brings us back to our original quest for understanding. We appreciate order, systematicity and control. If we can know generalizations and draw connections from seemingly unrelated occurrences, we will have more power and control in this world. Now we also see a different form of science permeating through societies. At the birth of civilization and culture, science too evolved, and what came out was a different animal. This science is now scientific knowledge. It is the culmination of the experience and education of every man who has ever lived. This was first carried out by the Church, wanting to formally tabulate every piece of empirical data considered by them to be significant. In a way it was a spectacular idea to have a reservoir of knowledge in which later works in the name of science could build upon. It eliminated the need for redoing experiments and redundancy in innovation. Therefore it was the first time science could progress and build on itself without having to be repeatedly rediscovered. The only problem now is to accept that the knowledge before us is right in order to move ahead. This presents the idea of trust into a system of rigid facts. We rather not think that our only key to truth (namely science) is made up of nothing concrete. In dissecting science, we find that it is really a compilation of assertions backed up by other statements. And every statement itself is based upon observations before that. Fundamentally, science is established on the principle that everything in the universe can be explained. How do we know that this is intrinsically true? We cannot. We can only make assumptions and we must accept these as certain before moving on. If that is the foundation of science then where does it lead us? We hear science is progressing or that we have made considerable progress in science, but where are we headed to as a society. Though it may appear so, I believe science is not a journey towards universal truth nor is it a way to capture all knowledge that exists. Logically science cannot and will not uncover the secrets to the universe. What science is then is a working knowledge of the world now. It is analogous to the process of evolution. Will evolution ever create an optimal organism? No. It can only take the available genes and “select” those best suited for the environment. Thus, science can only take what we know and “select” the most plausible explanations to describe our world. When we discover something new that doesn’t fit our known explanations we will just amend science. It will never reach a level of omniscient nor does it have to. What we call science works for us and we can do everything we need to with it. For that matter, science is not about being undoubtedly right but to be adaptive to our changing lifestyles. Looking at the whole picture, science becomes an evolutionary process. Just as evolutionary theory asserts that the driving process of natural selection works in the interplay of the inherited genes and its environment to influence the organism, science operates in a similar fashion through scientists. Scientists have their own genius but they can only be as good as the time frame they live in. Scientists need play off of the contemporaries in their field, the available institutions and also the technology of the period. It may have been Galileo’s genius, but we cannot overlook the fact that he did have the necessary tools to shape his lens and the previous works of Copernicus. And perhaps Einstein could be described as the embodiment of pure intellect but only because he had Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and all the right people surrounding him to bounce ideas off of. On top of that, the industrial revolution had allowed technology to be up to date with modern quantum physics and thus Einstein had access to the best research facilities of the time. Finally, we are able to say that Oppenheimer was able to construct the atomic bomb because of his ingenuity and equally importantly the vast amounts of silver available in the US reserve. Scientists are the drivers of science, and they can only be as revolutionary as their environment permits them to be. And as the world around us changes, our scientists will continue to tweak science learning from the past and harnessing the technologies of the future.