What is Science?
What is science? I do not mean just the dictionary definition, though perhaps we need to start with something commonly accepted like that in order to understand more fully what science is.
(This came up in the discussion of "Ego Depletion." My comments here were too long and involved for that. So, I offer this as a new topic.)
A few years ago, before going under the knife at a university research and teaching hospital, I signed an agreement that I understood that medicine is an art, not a science, and that outcomes are not predictable. Maybe that is why the German word for medical doctor is "der Arzt." But medical practice certainly depends on science, does it not? And they do have medical research, which we hope is practiced as a science, rather than an art like ballet or ceramics.
(Granted that art has a lot of science in it: chemistry of pigments, physics of firing, anatomy, botany... it is all there if you care to know. Does "the science of painting" make sense?)
In this discussion, blarman, WilliamShipley, and lucky differentiated engineering from science. We commonly accept the generalization that scientists discover basic laws; and engineers apply those to the creation of new products; and technicians maintain those creations. That is how things are today. History provides a different model.
The steam engine came before thermodynamics. The telegraph and telephone antedated Maxwell's Equations. Luther Burbank died 20 years before DNA was announced. Similarly, William Smith, who predicted and found the presence of coal by the fossil record of England, died 20 years before The Origin of Species (-- http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20....
Inventions are largely the improvements of technicians, not the direct applications of theories to new practices.
Computer science may not yet be a science, but the summary work we are doing now will be generalized into new theoretical models.
In William Gibson's "Bridge Trilogy" set in the immediate future, some of the viewpoint characters are artists in a beach house, majoring in Media Science at UC Berkeley. It is not a science yet...
But, what, then is a science?
I look at the practice. If a pursuit consciously chooses the scientific method, then it is a science.
We all know the basic Scientific Method:
1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics...
Norman Edmund (1916-2012), founder of Edmund Scientific - and who has not been a customer? - taught a 14-step process.
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
Steps or Stages of the Scientific Method
1. Curious Observation
2. Is There a Problem?
3. Goals & Planning
4. Search, Explore, & Gather the Evidence
5. Generate Creative & Logical Alternative Solutions
6. Evaluate the Evidence
7. Make the Educated Guess (Hypothesis)
8. Challenge the Hypothesis
9. Reach a Conclusion
10. Suspend Judgment
11.Take Action
Supporting Ingredients
12. Creative, Non-Logical, Logical & Technical Methods
13. Procedural Principals & Theories
14. Attributes & Thinking Skills
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
The way I learned it - five steps, seven, or more - publishing your findings is always the last step. That can mean just recording this in your notebook, if the results are intermediary. But in any case, you must finalize the process by making it possible for others to replicate the work.
That was perhaps the essential truth that separated chemistry from alchemy in Robert Boyle's Sceptical Chymist (1661). Boyle argued for open disclosure of means and methods. That openness - your own open mind open to the minds of others - may be the sine qua non of science. It also speaks to the tension of science in the context of national security. That is nothing new. Projective geometry was held as a French military secret. Can anything secret be a science?
(This came up in the discussion of "Ego Depletion." My comments here were too long and involved for that. So, I offer this as a new topic.)
A few years ago, before going under the knife at a university research and teaching hospital, I signed an agreement that I understood that medicine is an art, not a science, and that outcomes are not predictable. Maybe that is why the German word for medical doctor is "der Arzt." But medical practice certainly depends on science, does it not? And they do have medical research, which we hope is practiced as a science, rather than an art like ballet or ceramics.
(Granted that art has a lot of science in it: chemistry of pigments, physics of firing, anatomy, botany... it is all there if you care to know. Does "the science of painting" make sense?)
In this discussion, blarman, WilliamShipley, and lucky differentiated engineering from science. We commonly accept the generalization that scientists discover basic laws; and engineers apply those to the creation of new products; and technicians maintain those creations. That is how things are today. History provides a different model.
The steam engine came before thermodynamics. The telegraph and telephone antedated Maxwell's Equations. Luther Burbank died 20 years before DNA was announced. Similarly, William Smith, who predicted and found the presence of coal by the fossil record of England, died 20 years before The Origin of Species (-- http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20....
Inventions are largely the improvements of technicians, not the direct applications of theories to new practices.
Computer science may not yet be a science, but the summary work we are doing now will be generalized into new theoretical models.
In William Gibson's "Bridge Trilogy" set in the immediate future, some of the viewpoint characters are artists in a beach house, majoring in Media Science at UC Berkeley. It is not a science yet...
But, what, then is a science?
I look at the practice. If a pursuit consciously chooses the scientific method, then it is a science.
We all know the basic Scientific Method:
1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.
http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics...
Norman Edmund (1916-2012), founder of Edmund Scientific - and who has not been a customer? - taught a 14-step process.
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
Steps or Stages of the Scientific Method
1. Curious Observation
2. Is There a Problem?
3. Goals & Planning
4. Search, Explore, & Gather the Evidence
5. Generate Creative & Logical Alternative Solutions
6. Evaluate the Evidence
7. Make the Educated Guess (Hypothesis)
8. Challenge the Hypothesis
9. Reach a Conclusion
10. Suspend Judgment
11.Take Action
Supporting Ingredients
12. Creative, Non-Logical, Logical & Technical Methods
13. Procedural Principals & Theories
14. Attributes & Thinking Skills
http://www.scientificmethod.com/index...
The way I learned it - five steps, seven, or more - publishing your findings is always the last step. That can mean just recording this in your notebook, if the results are intermediary. But in any case, you must finalize the process by making it possible for others to replicate the work.
That was perhaps the essential truth that separated chemistry from alchemy in Robert Boyle's Sceptical Chymist (1661). Boyle argued for open disclosure of means and methods. That openness - your own open mind open to the minds of others - may be the sine qua non of science. It also speaks to the tension of science in the context of national security. That is nothing new. Projective geometry was held as a French military secret. Can anything secret be a science?
