Derek+Belanger+What+is+Science?

Derek Belanger Adam Hagelgans Since the dawn of HUmankind we have been using our brains to solve obstacles that impede our day to day progress. Whether it was the first stone tools or 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’s next” that drove the human mind further and further. That thirst eventually became what we know today as science. Science is what we know, but it isn’t 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. 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 much more complex, early people started using it from logic. Ironically, Aristotle claimed to have invented logic but, unfortunately for him, that does not make sense logically. So does this mean that science is math? In a way math is in fact the foundation for science but science is much more than just that. If science is math, and math is logic, then science is logic. That makes perfect sense, right? Wrong, science isn’t logic because if you use a simple example brought up in class. How u can explain condensation around a glass, logically you would assume there were holes in the glass but there isn’t. 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. Science lives in the here and now, and that brings up a paradox. If science from yesterday isn’t 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 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 accepted 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 figure out. 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 perform those tasks. That is why occasionally science and religion are seen as two opposing forces because one is conservative and one is progressive. 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 even worked for the church by doing science. Galileo was close friends with Pope Urban VIII, until the Pope caved to conservative pressure about Galileo’s heliocentric views. That’s why science is so great; it changed men from being promoted by the church to one of the church’s biggest heretics. Similarly, science is now viewed as the opposite of the arts, such as painting, dance, music, and so on and so forth. In many schools, they are cutting 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? 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. 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 in its basic form. There are arguments that would say, “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 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. 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.