What Science Isn’t

April 17th, 2008

I generally only censor spam or super obnoxious posts from my blog, and luckily haven’t had any in the second category (knock on plastic). I’m in turns bemused and annoyed with comments on some entries, like this one, about the antiscience propoganda piece that is Expelled. I know I’m going to be preaching to the choir for most who read my thoughts here, but I thought I’d try to articulate what science isn’t, because that seems to be where the conflicts arise with those pushing anti-science agendas. This applies to creationists, most global warming deniers, those who fear the Frankenfoods and man playing god more generally, and Michael Crichton and his audience.

First, science isn’t a faith. It isn’t a belief. There’s nothing sacred about it. It has no religion, but that doesn’t make it atheist.

Science isn’t political. It isn’t left wing. It isn’t right wing. It has no political agenda.

Science isn’t American. It isn’t English-speaking. It isn’t contained by borders or nationalities.

Science isn’t policy. Science doesn’t say we should or shouldn’t do something. It simply tells us what’s most likely to happen if we do or don’t do something.

Science, is, simply put, the best methodology ever devised for developing reliable knowledge about the world we live in. If you’re reading this now, science has delivered this information to you, and you can’t pretend it doesn’t work and work well. It is the best way of learning how the world works.

Now, individual scientists may be biased, elitists bastards or worse who abuse science to their own ends, but they are no worse (and quite a bit less worse in my experience) than child molesting priests or lying politicians who cast a poor light on their organizations, but shouldn’t negatively impact underlying the ideals underlying their organizations. Those should stand or fall based on their merits, or lack thereof, rather than based on the bad behavior of individual adherants.

So, in the case of evolution in schools…that’s the science. Some particular religion may be right about this aspect of creation or that, or aliens may have come to Earth to tinker with the life forms here, but we have no evidence of these things. For evolution, we have mountains of evidence, well studied, well tested. That’s what should get taught. Likewise for every case where science has advanced our understanding. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it. It’s still very likely right, based on the track record of science that lets you read this post on your screen today, and it would be a crime to our children and their education to do otherwise.

What’s even more important to teach are not the facts or theories that science has provided us. It’s, again, the methodology that is the core of science itself that is most critically important. The procedure works, and it works in every day life. Ideas can and should be tested, by everyone, and the best and most reliable way to do that is to use the same methods underlying science:

Gather reliable data, and know how certain it is. Develop hypotheses for understanding the observations. Test those by making predictions and testing them against new data. Change your ideas when they fail the tests. Wash, rise, and repeat. The end result will be understanding that can be justified to anyone in the world and that will provide useful answers when required.

Science can’t tell us everything about everything, but where it can be applied, accept no substitutes. The track record makes a strong case that those substitutes are almost always wrong.

Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , ,

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.