Science

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[edit] Overview

[edit] In a Nutshell

Science is the idea that the universe is knowable, and that evidence and reproducible experiment are the best ways of discovering it. (hat-tip to Jonathan on Contrary Brin)

[edit] Definition & Terminology

The word "science" generally refers to any of the following1:

  1. the scientific method: an intellectual endeavor aimed at a rational understanding of reality (also described as "the natural and social world")
  2. scientific knowledge: a corpus of currently accepted substantive knowledge
  3. the scientific community: the community of scientists, with its mores and its social and economic structure
  4. applied science: technology (as in "science has achieved many wonderful things" like "digital watches", "New York, wars, and so on")

("The scientific community" is also sometimes referred to as "the scientific establishment", especially when the speaker is proposing some theory based on principles which have been generally rejected by said establishment.)

For the purposes of discussion on this site, "science" by itself should be taken as referring to definition #1.

[edit] Key Attributes

Science (definition #1) is a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge about reality, with reason and observation being given primacy over any other methods of discovery.

Science's methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: the commitment to the incessant testing of theoretical assertions through observations and/or experimentation, and to revising or discarding those theories where experiment shows them to be inaccurate.

In other words:

  • In order to be called scientific, an observation must be verifiable. If subsequent testing does not confirm the original observation, then that observation is rejected.
  • In order to be called scientific, a theory must be either falsifiable or verifiable. If there is no conceivable observation which would prove the theory wrong, then it is not falsifiable and it is not scientific.

One corollary of this is fallibilism: the understanding that all of our empirical knowledge is tentative, incomplete, and open to revision in the light of new evidence or cogent new arguments. (It should be understood, though, that the more an existing piece of scientific knowledge has withstood scrutiny, the more devastating must the evidence or argument be in order to succeed in unseating it in any capacity.)

Agreement on what constitutes scientific knowledge is not unanimous in all cases. The most widely-accepted pieces of scientific knowledge are part of an interlocking framework, where each piece reinforces the others, and information from one area of science (e.g. biology) must not contradict information from other areas (e.g. physics, chemistry); if an inaccurate piece of information somehow "got in", it would quickly become apparent that it was inconsistent with countless others. Likewise, when one piece of such widely-accepted scientific knowledge is proven to be false (e.g. that the sun does not revolve around the earth), the implications generally affect other, related pieces, and sometimes go far beyond that one piece; when a key piece of knowledge is overturned, it often leads – like one first stone in a tightly-packed layer finally coming loose – to countless new truths being discovered, which then become part of a new, more accurate and more complete framework.

Science generally proceeds from the assumption that there is an objective reality or truth2. Science does not presume that a full understanding of that objective reality can ever be achieved, but works instead from a process of successive approximation, i.e. iteratively improving on our understanding of reality without necessarily ever knowing all of it3.

To oversimplify all this just a bit, science has one rule: Everything must be questioned, even this rule.

[edit] Overview References

[edit] 1

Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers? (PDF) by Alan Sokal ([1]): includes an excellent lay-level overview of the key attributes of science, a similar overview of pseudoscience, and guidelines for distinguishing between them; portions of the explanation above are extensively quoted and paraphrased from that article.

[edit] 2

...as opposed to postmodernism, which asserts that "truth" only exists within the context of a given social group's reference frame.

[edit] 3

...as opposed to most (all?) religion, which generally asserts the possession of a set of absolute and/or unchanging truth via divinely-guided writing, ancient scrolls, or other mystical and supernatural means.

[edit] Related Articles

[edit] Links

[edit] Reference / Projects

  • Wikipedia:
    • The Science wars were a series of intellectual battles in the 1990s between "postmodernists" and "realists" about the nature of scientific theories; the postmodernists questioned the objectivity of science, and the realists countered that there is such a thing as objective scientific knowledge and accused the postmodernists of having a poor understanding of the subject.
    • Hindsight bias
  • Bad Astronomy is a site which debunks astronomically-related hoax claims
  • Center for Inquiry: "working to promote and defend reason, science, and freedom of inquiry..."
  • Public Library of Science: "nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource"
  • Essays by Richard Feynman:
    • What Is Science?: one definition is "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." "Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers of the preceding generation."
    • Cargo Cult Science: examples of the "leaning over backwards" (to avoid self-deception) which characterizes true scientific investigation
  • Conservapedia repeats the false claim that Albert Einstein believed in God
  • dKosopedia
  • SourceWatch stub article (as of 2008-05-20)

[edit] Filed Links

  • 2008-06-14 /S/D/ Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol “Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”. .. Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.”
  • 2008-06-12 /S/D/ Support cancer research now! “Those are survivorship curves for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. When the lines are plunging downwards, that means kids are dying like flies; when the lines flatten out horizontally, that means no kids are dying. Each line has a date for when the survival was measured. Look at the mid-1960s, the yellow line: 90% of the kids diagnosed with ALL would die within five years. But then look at the other curves — in the 1970s, 64% would die; in the early 80s, about half; in the late 80s, about 30%; in the 90s, about 20%; and now, about 10%. What's going on? .. We haven't been evolving ALL-resistant kids. The medicine has been getting better. Every percentage point that those lines are pushed upwards is the outcome of hard work and clinical testing of new drugs and protocols and therapies and diagnostic tools. That's impressive. This is how we progress. .. You will sometimes hear people claim that the answer is found in the natural healing power of the body, and that doctors don't really do anything but let nature do all the work (or worse, that treatments for cancer poison people and hinder nature's healing power). They may also say that children are just especially tough and healthy, so pediatric cancers are relatively easy... but look at the data. When doctors don't have effective treatments and don't intervene, we get those yellow lines from the 1960s. We get 90%+ survival when doctors can exercise their hard-earned knowledge.”
  • 2008-06-01 /S/D/ Put a Little Science in Your Life “But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.”
  • 2008-05-15 /S/D/ When Science Can't Help “In any case, right now you've got people dismissing cryonics out of hand as "not scientific", like it was some kind of pharmaceutical you could easily administer to 1000 patients and see what happened. "Call me when cryonicists actually revive someone," they say; which, as Mike Li observes, is like saying "I refuse to get into this ambulance; call me when it's actually at the hospital". Maybe Martin Gardner warned them against believing in strange things without experimental evidence. So they wait for the definite unmistakable verdict of Science, while their family and friends and 150,000 people per day are dying right now, and might or might not be savable – - a calculated bet you could only make rationally. .. The drive of Science is to obtain a mountain of evidence so huge that not even fallible human scientists can misread it. But even that sometimes goes wrong, when people become confused about which theory predicts what, or bake extremely-hard-to-test components into an early version of their theory. And sometimes you just can't get clear experimental evidence at all. .. Either way, you have to try to do the thing that Science doesn't trust anyone to do - think rationally, and figure out the answer before you get clubbed over the head with it.”
  • 2008-05-13 /S/D/ Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality “Libertarianism and MWI are both are grand philosophical theories that start from premises that almost all educated people accept (quantum mechanics in the one case, Econ 101 in the other), and claim to reach conclusions that most educated people reject, or are at least puzzled by (the existence of parallel universes / the desirability of eliminating fire departments).”
  • 2007-03-06 /S/D/ What is science? “Unfortunately, "science" is one of those hugely polymorphic terms that carries a tremendous amount of baggage, and any one definition is going to be inadequate. This is one of those subjects where a smart philosopher ... could go on at amazing length, and even then, everyone will argue with their summaries. I'll just charge in, though, and give a couple of shorter definitions off the top of my head.”

[edit] Articles

  • 2007-07-27 A prescription for terror: "A substantial number of perpetrators of terrorism are products of a scientific education. Debora MacKenzie asks whether there is a connection and how deep it might go."
  • 2007-07-01 The new age of ignorance by Tim Adams: "We take our young children to science museums, then as they get older we stop. In spite of threats like global warming and avian flu, most adults have very little understanding of how the world works. So, 50 years on from CP Snow's famous 'Two Cultures' essay, is the old divide between arts and sciences deeper than ever?"

[edit] Other

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