What+Is+This+Science+V2.0

Grasping and understanding science is a daunting task. Science has magnitude and age, but what it makes it far more difficult to study is it’s unassuming place in our everyday lives. We are, inevitably, //in// science day in and day out. It is this proximity to it that makes science difficult to comprehend honestly. With some irony, I have thought about science as scientifically as possible and determined three major facets that must be examined with scrutiny. The beginning of science, how we use science (or the relationship between science and technology), and science in a purely evolutionary and biological sense. Though I cannot deny that this approach is somewhat arbitrary I believe that to be its strength. Most components of human culture can be better understand by approaching it from these three angles.

Some attribute it to the agrarian revolution, some the advent of tools. No matter the cause, there was a point in the development of our species when we ceased to rely on our physical strength or speed and began to use our intelligence for survival. Beyond having intelligence on an individual level, humans now had access to processed information. Previously, the only information a human had about the world was based on whatever sensory data was available and how a set of biological instincts interpreted it. This new kind of knowledge was ‘second hand’ in that it might not be a function of sensory information, but always derived from it with a conscious thought process. With a greater understanding of herd movements and grazing patterns, we became better hunters and eventually discovered animal husbandry. We began to learn more about plants, how and where they could be gathered. Eventually, we learned enough to sew our own seeds, and started the agrarian revolution.

This trend continues throughout human history, becoming more and more complex. Since that critical tipping point mankind has further insured our own survival through a better understanding of our world and universe without notable physical evolution. But somewhere along the way, the quest for survival through knowledge was simplified to just ‘the quest for knowledge’. And with the advancement of culture, it became a recognized institution and force in this world, thereafter referred to as ‘science’.

Obviously, the life threatening world our ancestors lived in is gone, but intelligence has continued to be valued by society. Partially because of its importance and status in cultures, as well as the increased complexity of our understanding of the natural world, organizations and societies were established to further science. These information gathering societies have had a number of different functions and social standings.

The first organization I feel compelled to mention is one that is not traditionally considered an ally of ‘science’: the Church. Remember, however, that we are not talking about scientific communities in the traditional sense of the word. The groups we must concern ourselves with are merely purveyors of information, people who are expected to know the answers that common folk do not regardless of the scientific integrity of those answers by modern standards. And the clergy, however unscientific it may be by today’s standards, devoted itself to deriving new knowledge from what they previously knew about the world. Unfortunately, their worldview was not particularly scientific and suffered from a lack of empirical evidence, relying on dogmatic religious traditions and antiquated biblical texts.

The church, namely the Roman Catholic Church, remained the undisputed authority of knowledge until a new school of thought emerged, pioneered by some of the first modern scientists. Familiar names like Galileo and Newton. This gave rise to an independent scientific community, supported through a combination of government and political interests as well as a budding university network. The network of colleges and institutes of learning have since stepped into the forefront of science. They contain a culture of academia so interesting that it deserves a study of its own, but the vastly more interesting factor here is government, and with that inevitably comes technology.

The chief motivator of government’s interest in science is war. War encourages technology, as you can see by examining the available technologies and overall scientific and technical knowledge before and after major conflicts. The United States Civil War began with custom, handmade, non-rifled guns and ended with rifled, mass produced weapons with interchangeable parts. World War 2’s recent technological advances are still having a profound effect on our world, most notably the atomic bombs and the development of rockets and space flight.

Governments start wars, and war advances technology, but what does science have to do with this progression? On further examination of the relationship of science and technology, it becomes clear that without technology, science shall exist and advance (albeit with some logistical limitations). Without science, however, technology cannot progress. Although it is not unheard of, we very rarely invent a device or technology without fully understanding the scientific principles behind it.

Science is necessary for the technology, and technology can be very advantageous in war. So governments that have a vested interest in war set up organizations like DARPA, or contract to universities and private corporations to further science so that they can benefit from the technologies it creates.

Which is the chicken and which is the egg? Does science give rise to advances in technology? Or is our constant need for new technologies forcing science to advance? To continue the analytical line of reasoning; I believe that science and technology are not too different variables, but the same variable in different equations. They are too completely codependent to be anything but two separate applications of the same principle. This concept manifests itself in the modern world in complex and convoluted ways, but creating a gross over-simplification makes it easier to understand.

Chimpanzees use stalks of grass or twigs to fish ants out of their tunnels. This is a technology (I use that term loosely), but it’s also a scientific understanding to know that the ants have an extended tunnel network that can be accessed with a tool. The chimp needed to know that when ants crawled into their anthill they didn’t disappear. When prompted with hunger, chimpanzee is given the proper motivation to get them out and a technology is born. Using the twig is not a separate concept from the anthill, it is merely the chimpanzee approaching the same knowledge with a different agenda.

This is a very complicated explanation of what science means to the modern world, but with a prompt as simple as “What is this science?” it’s far too tempting to oversimplify the answer into a philosophical dissertation on the essence of one thing or the true nature of another. Originally, science was a simple Darwinian technique. Mental evolution as opposed to physical. It has since evolved into something hardly recognizable, a complex network of motives and societal desires that have been intertwined into cultures and societies. In the beginning it was nothing more than the path to survival with the least resistance.