What+is+Science+2.0

In today’s world one cannot help but be influenced by this thing called science. Science has evolved throughout history into a prominent practice for investigating natural phenomena in nature. But what is this science exactly? Science is a noun, and although it isn’t a person, place, or thing, it does fall under that small category of idea. It is an ever evolving idea about two-thousand four hundred years in the making.

To the Greeks, science was mainly based upon philosophy. And since the question, “what is science?” would mainly be asked by a philosopher, it is only fitting to begin here; plus it’s chronological and convention tells me to do it this way. Aristotle pretty much kicked off this whole meeting of the minds episode back in Greece. Although scientific advancement was limited due to their mathematical constraints as well as technological ones (we’ll get there later), Aristotle invented this thing called logic. In a nut shell, what he said was that if A equals B, and B equals C, then A must in turn equal C. This type of deductive reasoning had its pros and cons. On one hand it allowed them to conclude on various observations they made about the world around them. On the other hand it led them to outrageous conclusions that were completely radical and false. An interesting question comes up as we analyze this time period, why? Why the sudden interest in what makes things tick? Throughout history from this point onward, the social purpose of science generally dictates to what field of study gets the most focus. Plato explains this epoch’s purpose for science beautifully. He emphasized that the arguments and problems they attempted to solve seemed at the time, “to be merely mental games, valuable for developing the mind.”

Now it isn’t until the Renaissance Period that true thinkers gave a giant leap in scientific advancement, and brought us much closer to what we believe this science is today. The reformation of natural philosophy from the occult believes of the past to a new systematic and in depth analysis of natural phenomena gave rise to the modern epoch. The only obstacle that geniuses like Copernicus and Galileo faced was the ever present influence of the church. Now there is one main difference between Theology and science. First of all theology is based on faith and trust, and as I will explain later, science depends on fact and as little trust and influence from outside forces as possible. René Descartes was very adamant about not letting personal morals, political influences and bias interfere with obtaining knowledge while the Royal Society was in session. A very popular belief among natural philosophers the century was in the clock metaphor. What it entailed was the correlation between the workings of the universe to a clock, with God as the clockmaster. Steven Shapin, author of //The Scientific Revolution,// discusses how mechanical philosophy (the science of this era) was religion’s right hand man. “A mechanical conception of nature could support belief in the existence of God at the most fundamental levels. We are to understand that a watch with moving hands and gears was at some point //set in motion//. We are also to accept that its component parts do not move themselves and are utterly dependent on an external motive agency.” As you see, a mechanical outlook on the universe was encouraged by the clergy due to its implied workings of the divine.

Advancements in mathematics and technology enabled new, more acute observations of the universe possible. But with some of this newly obtained knowledge, came great controversy. Nicolas Copernicus was a holy man, and a scientist, so when he observed that the earth may not be the center of the universe, like bible told him; he was torn between what he believed and what he saw as reality. The year of his death, Copernicus’ theory was published and it planted the seed of doubt in many peoples’ minds about the credibility of the church. They saw that scientific fact, even the little that Copernicus had to make these radical statements, was reality, and what the Church had to offer was only assumptions they were told were the truth. This was in my mind the beginning of a scientific approach to solving the everyday curiosities we have.

Now since the days of Aristotle up until the present date science has been ever-evolving. How so? With advancements in technology scientists from every century have been able to trust less, assume less and therefore come to more accurate conclusions. This, therefore, made it easier for the scientific community and the general public to accept this finding as the truth. So why does data make people believe something is the truth, and printings like the bible don’t. Is God’s word not good enough? Science is the process of producing unbiased unflinching proof about phenomena in nature. So if you make an observation that goes against the word of God what does it mean? However, even today there is some form of trust involved in reaching scientific conclusions. For example, if I observe that when I rub my socks against a carpet and then touch something medal, I get shocked. A conclusion I can make on this observation would be to say I excited electrons and produced static shock, and since medal conducts electricity it shocked me when I touched it. I can’t see excited electrons, but the scientific community says they’re there. Theories and Laws both involve some sort of trust, Scientific Law is just a theory widely excepted by the scientific community. Men like Democritus and Newton had trouble making the community believe there theories for lack of proof, unavailable to them because of technological limitations.

At the turn of the twentieth century, a war was brewing. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was published in 1859, and ever since religious organizations have fought to dispel the intruder. However, This may not be an appropriate gambit, as Kenneth Miller would argue. Miller debates, in his essay **//Finding Darwin's //** **//God //,  ****that **  modern Creationists’ biggest problem was to try and fit God into where science has not yet explained phenomena in nature. Indeed it has begun to seem that undermining God’s existence in life becomes modern religions only weapon against scientific fact. The reality of the situation is that, according to Kenneth Miller, God has granted us the ability to discover what makes the world go ‘round. Miller explains that, “To a believer, the particular history leading to us shows how truly remarkable we are, how rare is the gift of consciousness, and how precious is the chance to understand.” We should embrace God’s gift of reason try to quench the insatiable thirst for knowledge.

Technology is directly proportional to advancement in science. With unsophisticated instruments like the Greeks had, hardcore evidence to what they assumed to be true was nearly impossible, thus logic was applied to help clarify where conclusions came from. The knowledge about the universe we’ve gathered today, however, would not have been possible to obtain without some of the intricate pieces of equipment used. Up until the early 1900’s our universe was just the Milky Way Galaxy, but with the rise of the Big Bang Theory and the invention of the Hubble space telescope, what we learned was that we are just a speck of sand compared to the rest of the universe.

One last interesting point about scientific observation is that it is based on perception of the world. And in connection to perception, one must realize that our senses tell us everything we know about our lives. Thus reality is just what our synapses want to transmit to our brains. One of the greatest films ever concocted to elaborate on this point was __The Matrix__. Neo believed he was in reality based on what his senses told him, little did he know that it was all fake, a program.

What is this science thing we live amongst every day of our lives? There is no complete way to dictate it but pretty much it is just a method of explanation used by humans. We observe, do a little bit of calculations on a mathematical system we created and in no way is tangible, and we conclude base on the results we get. Science makes things easier to understand. One must remember, however, that it is only but a means of explaining natural phenomena in nature based on the cultural implications, despite the amount of effort to disconnect all external influences. It makes us warm inside because we know how fast light travels and how far we can launch a projectile at our enemy and destroy them. So I guess if we use Aristotelian logic on this one we could say that since science makes us warm, and hot cocoa makes us warm, it is inevitable that science is hot cocoa.