Friday, May 28, 2010

Day 51 Blog Post 11 - Science

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

Science (from the latian scientia, meaning knowledge) is a systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge and condensing that knowledge into testable theories and laws.

At this some methods prove better than others, the scientific method includes,
  • Use of careful observation
  • Experiment
  • Measurement
  • Mathematics
  • Replication
A scientific hypothesis is an educated guess about the nature of universe, a scientific theory is one which has been confirmed by repeated observation and measurement. A theory is thus an understanding of the nature of universe which explains the phenomenon with a good accuracy

Scientific fields are broadly  divided into
  • Natural sciences : which include all things natural including biology
  • Social sciences : which study human behavior and societies
Basically, the difference is in the former you have pretty accurate understanding of what is happening, and hence we have been able to reach the moon :) ... while the latter, keeps getting more and more trickier, ... which is why we still have wars :p .... luckily, now with the emergence of neuroscience and other related fields, the latter is expected to be a part of natural sciences soon.

Now the empirical studies have been in existence since age immortal, but they have been employed only after the middle ages (e.g. Ibn al-Haytham, Abu Rahyan Biruni, and Roger Bacon) and the dawn of sciences is credited to the same era, with the 16th and 17th century being the era of the scientific revolution.

Something I found interesting was that the earliest users of the scientific method include two Muslims and a friar, so much for religion v/s science.

The scientific method seeks to explain nature in a reproducible way, basically to eliminate any lucky chances or personal biases.

First you develop a model or hypothesis and design experiments to test it. The same is then  peer-reviewed (maybe to provide inputs or find faults which the scientist might have missed). After this, independent researchers perform follow up experiments to test the veracity of the hypothesis... and to make sure that the scientist didn't do something naughty with the data from the experiment ;)

Once a hypothesis survives testing, it may become adopted into a framework of scientific theory.... whatever that means :p.... The part I like in this paragraph is Occam's Razor... also known as law of parsimony, basically meaning that if one construct explains all phenonmenon that artificially adding another is of no use... too much jargon?? .... imagine like this, if One Professor, who speaks really technical lingo but knows all there is to know to teach in a school.... and then there are 4 Professors who combined know equal to the first professor, but do so in simpler language, hence students like them more... then Occam's Razor says that first professor is better.

Haha.. I know right... talk about intellectual elitism, but hey! this is science we are talking about.

Mathematics is essential to science because of the support it provides in modelling and testing.

Science is like a religion too in many ways, because it asks you to believe in the knowledge collected by others, now if somebody tells me tommorow that the moon is made out of cheese, I won't believe him, but if  somebody comes out with an repeatable experiment to prove the same, I would have no rebuttal.

Doesn't that make my belief system quite unstable? Actually yes! it does, and like all other people who are unsure, scientists too TALK about their beliefs.... just like aunties gossip about what they and somebody else did was right or wrong in their kitty parties ... Scientists have their own "Communities" which serve the same purpose.

Now, these have 3 broad forms.
  • Fields : Basically people who are all working in the same field of science, analogous to aunties living in same neighborhood ... it is a co-opetitive environment (blend of competitive and cooperation)
  • Institutions : These people come together and form institutions ... think of it being like alcholics anonymous, these people too come together and tell everyone "Hi! My name is XYZ, and I am a scientist working in area ABC... I need help" .... haha.. boredom is the best !!
  • Literature : Ohk, so now these scientists have done their experiments on their hypothesis, they publish them in journals... now journal is nothing but a fancy scientific name for a magazine... and it is no better, it's basic purpose is to establish territory and letting other people know, I have done this, I have take down his flag from there.... Men need to pee on everything!!.. I don't know who said that, but really clever :)
 Now I am sure, by this era nobody counters science, whatever has been scientifically proven is the fact.... but wait... philosophers are the grand-daddies of scientists and they were never gonna leave all the authority to scientists... so they have three basic issues with science :p... on why it is misleading .. they claim that scientific method assumes
  • Reality is objective and consistent... I am just scared to imagine it can be anything but that.. but hey!! I am just a kid
  • Humans have a capacity to perceive reality accurately..... BIGGEST problem if you ask me... like one of my friends says... perception is everything, if your perception is colored, how can you expect the theory to be accurate
  • Rational explanations exist for elements of real world... Haha!!.. you don't want to mess with the philosophers... If science is good at collecting knowledge, philosophy is the still home to wisdom
Besides this... uniformity of law and uniformity of processes across time and space pose other problems... I would explain, but it is way to complicated than I want to cover here... read the wiki if you think if this interests you.

Besides this there are several other critiques but they are baby questions in front of these big daddies!!.. some of them are
1. Science has become manipulative, moved away from being a simple area of collecting knowledge to manipulating nature
2. The growth of science as a whole has no process governing it, and that is has become an ideology with more authority than it justified
3. Science is based on circular pretexts, the process (scientific method) itself has been developed by science only and it only accepts criticisms which come from the same framework which science has setup for itself, hence making it quite narrow in it's approach
4. Carl Jung, stated that science intends to understand all the universe and asks artificial questions, we should focus not on those artificial methods but understand the world in a more holistic manner.

I don't really know what to say now :p.... am super-confused now

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