Science as a Way of Knowing

1. Science as a Way of Knowing

2. What is Science? • The impact of science on the modern world is so pervasive that it is nearly impossible to fully appreciate how much we owe to the scientific method and what it has produced. In fact, the way that science permeates our society is so complete that it is hard to imagine the world without it – yet the world was without it for most of the history of humankind.

3. Our Science-based World • Short thinking exercise: • Consider the advances that have occurred in technology, medicine, and our understanding of nature as you move through the following time periods to the present: 2000 years ago,1000 years ago, 500 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago. What can you infer about the nature of progress in the scientific era?

4. What is Science? • In its simplest definition, science is a way of knowing. The word comes down to us from the Latin word scientia – meaning "to know."

5. For the greatest part of human history, people lived in ignorance of the workings of the natural world that surrounded them. While an empirical understanding of their environment gave them the necessary information to survive, the world of our ancestors was often a cruel and mysterious place.

6. Science and Superstition • To understand their world, try to imagine a time before we knew that microorganisms are the cause of many diseases. In those times, what would you think caused sicknesses? Would you blame evil spirits?

7. The Power of Science • Science today offers explanations for phenomena. It makes predictions that guide us in the quest for further understanding. It is a self-correcting, ever-compounding means of gaining knowledge about the universe that we inhabit.

9. Albert Einstein once said this about science: “All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike – and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

10. Einstein’s words remind us that science does not have all the answers. We still have much to learn. Science shows us the way to knowing, it is, as the late Carl Sagan referred to it,"a candle in the dark".

11. Does science threaten our beliefs? • Only if we choose to believe in ignorance. • Science opens the door to enlightenment, and simultaneously closes it on dogma. • Science is not the equivalent of religion, nor is it a replacement for it, rather it supplants it.

12. Does science threaten our beliefs? • What scares some people about the findings of science is the same thing that scares them about the truth in many other matters – it may differ from what we have already decided to believe. • The philosopher Henre Poincare observed: “We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.”

13. How do we tellreal sciencefrom non-science orpseudo-science? • Can the hypothesis be put at risk? • Is there a selective use of the facts by the advocates of the claim or idea? • Is a “hypothesis” supported by the criticism of other competing ideas (or personal attacks on the people offering those alternative ideas)? • Does the explanation rely on overly simplistic explanations?

14. Thinking Exercise • Pick a popular conspiracy theory, questionable product claim, or urban myth and apply the “tests” just discussed to it. Is it real science or is it busted?