What is Science?
Posted on | February 26, 2010 | Comments Off
Is Science About Bottles and Books?
When somebody hears the word “Science”, it will conjure an idea in their mind. This idea or image will vary depending on that person’s background and experience of science. For some it will be a bespectacled man in a white coat beavering away at a bench laden with bubbling glassware; for others the word will suggest impenetrable formulae and impossible equations; while to others it will signify technology, gadgets and even space travel.
It has been said that science is everywhere. But is this true? Certainly natural processes are going on everywhere and we all now use technology developed by science, but does that mean we are involved in science or that “SCIENCE” is happening?
I recently came across a web page for a course at the University of Georgia in the US. The course is in the department of geology and one of the lectures is simply entitled “What is Science?”. One of the connected resources is a collection of definitions of science, beginning with more conventional definitions and leading to less conventional ones. There is material in that section for several articles in sciencerity.com.
This is how the author of the course (Dr Bruce Railsback) defines science:
Science is the concerted human effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding.
This implies that science involves actual investigation. It is an effort to understand how natural processes work. And it uses observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding.
So, science is not everywhere.
The results of science – reasoned investigation of natural processes – are more-or-less everywhere now.
Natural processes – the raw material that science investigates – really are everywhere, but they only become science when they are being studied.
I would like to think that clear, structured explanations of science, could be considered as science – because that is what I do best!
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