Science Art and Religion Normally Need Not Contradict One Another Because

Chapter ane: THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

THE SCIENTIFIC Due westORLD 5IEW

Due southCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

THE SouthCIENTIFIC ENTERPRISE

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Chapter 1: THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

Over the class of man history, people take adult many interconnected and validated ideas about the concrete, biological, psychological, and social worlds. Those ideas accept enabled successive generations to achieve an increasingly comprehensive and reliable understanding of the man species and its environs. The means used to develop these ideas are particular means of observing, thinking, experimenting, and validating. These ways represent a fundamental aspect of the nature of scientific discipline and reflect how science tends to differ from other modes of knowing.

It is the union of scientific discipline, mathematics, and technology that forms the scientific try and that makes it so successful. Although each of these human enterprises has a graphic symbol and history of its own, each is dependent on and reinforces the others. Appropriately, the outset three chapters of recommendations describe portraits of scientific discipline, mathematics, and engineering science that emphasize their roles in the scientific effort and reveal some of the similarities and connections among them.

This chapter lays out recommendations for what knowledge of the way science works is requisite for scientific literacy. The affiliate focuses on three chief subjects: the scientific world view, scientific methods of inquiry, and the nature of the scientific enterprise. Chapters 2 and three consider ways in which mathematics and engineering differ from science in general. Chapters 4 through 9 present views of the earth as depicted by current science; Chapter x, Historical Perspectives, covers key episodes in the development of scientific discipline; and Chapter 11, Common Themes, pulls together ideas that cut across all these views of the world.

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THE SouthwardCIENTIFIC WestORLD 5IEW

Scientists share certain basic beliefs and attitudes about what they do and how they view their work. These accept to do with the nature of the world and what tin be learned about it.

The World Is Understandable

Science presumes that the things and events in the universe occur in consequent patterns that are comprehensible through careful, systematic study. Scientists believe that through the use of the intellect, and with the aid of instruments that extend the senses, people can discover patterns in all of nature.

Science also assumes that the universe is, every bit its name implies, a vast single system in which the basic rules are everywhere the same. Knowledge gained from studying one office of the universe is applicable to other parts. For instance, the same principles of move and gravitation that explain the motion of falling objects on the surface of the world also explain the motility of the moon and the planets. With some modifications over the years, the same principles of motion accept applied to other forces—and to the motion of everything, from the smallest nuclear particles to the most massive stars, from sailboats to infinite vehicles, from bullets to light rays.

Scientific Ideas Are Subject To Alter

Science is a process for producing knowledge. The process depends both on making careful observations of phenomena and on inventing theories for making sense out of those observations. Change in cognition is inevitable because new observations may challenge prevailing theories. No affair how well one theory explains a set up of observations, it is possible that another theory may fit just as well or improve, or may fit a still wider range of observations. In science, the testing and improving and occasional discarding of theories, whether new or old, go on all the time. Scientists assume that fifty-fifty if there is no way to secure complete and absolute truth, increasingly accurate approximations can be made to account for the world and how it works.

Scientific Knowledge Is Durable

Although scientists turn down the notion of attaining accented truth and have some uncertainty as office of nature, nearly scientific noesis is durable. The modification of ideas, rather than their outright rejection, is the norm in science, as powerful constructs tend to survive and grow more precise and to become widely accepted. For case, in formulating the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein did non discard the Newtonian laws of motion but rather showed them to be only an approximation of limited application within a more general concept. (The National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses Newtonian mechanics, for instance, in calculating satellite trajectories.) Moreover, the growing power of scientists to make accurate predictions about natural phenomena provides convincing evidence that nosotros really are gaining in our agreement of how the globe works. Continuity and stability are equally characteristic of science as change is, and confidence is as prevalent as tentativeness.

Science Cannot Provide Consummate Answers to All Questions

At that place are many matters that cannot usefully exist examined in a scientific style. There are, for example, beliefs that—by their very nature—cannot exist proved or disproved (such as the existence of supernatural powers and beings, or the true purposes of life). In other cases, a scientific arroyo that may exist valid is probable to be rejected as irrelevant by people who hold to certain beliefs (such as in miracles, fortune-telling, star divination, and superstition). Nor do scientists have the means to settle problems concerning good and evil, although they can sometimes contribute to the discussion of such bug by identifying the probable consequences of particular actions, which may be helpful in weighing alternatives.

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SouthCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Fundamentally, the various scientific disciplines are akin in their reliance on evidence, the use of hypothesis and theories, the kinds of logic used, and much more. Nevertheless, scientists differ greatly from one some other in what phenomena they investigate and in how they go about their work; in the reliance they place on historical data or on experimental findings and on qualitative or quantitative methods; in their recourse to fundamental principles; and in how much they depict on the findings of other sciences. Still, the exchange of techniques, information, and concepts goes on all the fourth dimension among scientists, and in that location are mutual understandings amongst them nigh what constitutes an investigation that is scientifically valid.

Scientific inquiry is non hands described apart from the context of particular investigations. At that place simply is no fixed set of steps that scientists ever follow, no one path that leads them unerringly to scientific noesis. There are, yet, certain features of science that requite it a distinctive character as a mode of inquiry. Although those features are especially characteristic of the piece of work of professional person scientists, anybody can exercise them in thinking scientifically well-nigh many matters of interest in everyday life.

Science Demands Evidence

Sooner or later, the validity of scientific claims is settled by referring to observations of phenomena. Hence, scientists concentrate on getting accurate data. Such prove is obtained by observations and measurements taken in situations that range from natural settings (such as a forest) to completely contrived ones (such equally the laboratory). To make their observations, scientists utilize their own senses, instruments (such as microscopes) that enhance those senses, and instruments that tap characteristics quite different from what humans tin sense (such as magnetic fields). Scientists discover passively (earthquakes, bird migrations), make collections (rocks, shells), and actively probe the world (every bit by dull into the earth's chaff or administering experimental medicines).

In some circumstances, scientists can command conditions deliberately and precisely to obtain their evidence. They may, for example, control the temperature, change the concentration of chemicals, or choose which organisms mate with which others. By varying just one condition at a time, they tin hope to identify its exclusive effects on what happens, unproblematic by changes in other conditions. Often, withal, command of conditions may exist impractical (as in studying stars), or unethical (as in studying people), or likely to distort the natural phenomena (as in studying wild animals in captivity). In such cases, observations have to exist made over a sufficiently wide range of naturally occurring conditions to infer what the influence of diverse factors might be. Because of this reliance on evidence, nifty value is placed on the development of better instruments and techniques of observation, and the findings of any one investigator or group are usually checked by others.

Scientific discipline Is a Blend of Logic and Imagination

Although all sorts of imagination and thought may be used in coming up with hypotheses and theories, sooner or later scientific arguments must conform to the principles of logical reasoning—that is, to testing the validity of arguments by applying certain criteria of inference, sit-in, and mutual sense. Scientists may often disagree about the value of a particular piece of testify, or about the appropriateness of particular assumptions that are made—and therefore disagree about what conclusions are justified. But they tend to agree about the principles of logical reasoning that connect evidence and assumptions with conclusions.

Scientists do not work only with data and well-adult theories. Oftentimes, they accept but tentative hypotheses well-nigh the manner things may exist. Such hypotheses are widely used in science for choosing what data to pay attention to and what additional data to seek, and for guiding the interpretation of information. In fact, the procedure of formulating and testing hypotheses is one of the core activities of scientists. To be useful, a hypothesis should suggest what prove would back up information technology and what evidence would abnegate information technology. A hypothesis that cannot in principle be put to the exam of evidence may be interesting, but information technology is not likely to exist scientifically useful.

The use of logic and the close exam of evidence are necessary but non usually sufficient for the advancement of science. Scientific concepts do not sally automatically from data or from whatsoever amount of analysis solitary. Inventing hypotheses or theories to imagine how the world works and then figuring out how they can be put to the test of reality is equally artistic as writing poesy, composing music, or designing skyscrapers. Sometimes discoveries in science are made unexpectedly, even by blow. Just knowledge and creative insight are usually required to recognize the pregnant of the unexpected. Aspects of data that accept been ignored by one scientist may lead to new discoveries past another.

Science Explains and Predicts

Scientists strive to make sense of observations of phenomena by constructing explanations for them that use, or are consistent with, currently accepted scientific principles. Such explanations—theories—may be either sweeping or restricted, but they must be logically sound and comprise a significant body of scientifically valid observations. The credibility of scientific theories oft comes from their ability to bear witness relationships amidst phenomena that previously seemed unrelated. The theory of moving continents, for example, has grown in credibility every bit it has shown relationships amongst such diverse phenomena as earthquakes, volcanoes, the friction match between types of fossils on different continents, the shapes of continents, and the contours of the sea floors.

The essence of science is validation past observation. Simply information technology is not enough for scientific theories to fit only the observations that are already known. Theories should also fit additional observations that were non used in formulating the theories in the first place; that is, theories should have predictive power. Demonstrating the predictive power of a theory does not necessarily require the prediction of events in the future. The predictions may be about evidence from the past that has not yet been found or studied. A theory about the origins of human beings, for example, can be tested past new discoveries of human-similar fossil remains. This arroyo is clearly necessary for reconstructing the events in the history of the earth or of the life forms on it. Information technology is also necessary for the report of processes that normally occur very slowly, such as the building of mountains or the crumbling of stars. Stars, for instance, evolve more slowly than we can normally observe. Theories of the evolution of stars, however, may predict unsuspected relationships between features of starlight that can then be sought in existing collections of data most stars.

Scientists Try to Place and Avert Bias

When faced with a claim that something is true, scientists reply by request what evidence supports it. Merely scientific testify tin can be biased in how the data are interpreted, in the recording or reporting of the data, or even in the choice of what data to consider in the first place. Scientists' nationality, sex activity, ethnic origin, age, political convictions, and and so on may incline them to wait for or emphasize one or another kind of evidence or interpretation. For example, for many years the written report of primates—past male scientists—focused on the competitive social behavior of males. Not until female scientists entered the field was the importance of female primates' community-building behavior recognized.

Bias attributable to the investigator, the sample, the method, or the instrument may not be completely avoidable in every instance, simply scientists want to know the possible sources of bias and how bias is likely to influence evidence. Scientists desire, and are expected, to be as alert to possible bias in their own work equally in that of other scientists, although such objectivity is not always achieved. One safeguard confronting undetected bias in an expanse of study is to have many different investigators or groups of investigators working in it.

Scientific discipline Is Non Authoritarian

Information technology is appropriate in scientific discipline, as elsewhere, to plow to knowledgeable sources of data and opinion, commonly people who specialize in relevant disciplines. Only esteemed authorities have been wrong many times in the history of scientific discipline. In the long run, no scientist, withal famous or highly placed, is empowered to decide for other scientists what is true, for none are believed by other scientists to have special access to the truth. At that place are no preestablished conclusions that scientists must reach on the basis of their investigations.

In the short run, new ideas that exercise not mesh well with mainstream ideas may come across vigorous criticism, and scientists investigating such ideas may have difficulty obtaining back up for their enquiry. Indeed, challenges to new ideas are the legitimate concern of scientific discipline in building valid knowledge. Even the nearly prestigious scientists have occasionally refused to accept new theories despite there being enough accumulated evidence to convince others. In the long run, even so, theories are judged past their results: When someone comes up with a new or improved version that explains more phenomena or answers more important questions than the previous version, the new one eventually takes its place.

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THE SCIENTIFIC EastNTERPRISE

Scientific discipline as an enterprise has individual, social, and institutional dimensions. Scientific activeness is one of the main features of the contemporary world and, maybe more than any other, distinguishes our times from earlier centuries.

Scientific discipline Is a Complex Social Activeness

Scientific work involves many individuals doing many different kinds of work and goes on to some degree in all nations of the earth. Men and women of all ethnic and national backgrounds participate in science and its applications. These people—scientists and engineers, mathematicians, physicians, technicians, computer programmers, librarians, and others—may focus on scientific knowledge either for its own sake or for a particular practical purpose, and they may be concerned with data gathering, theory edifice, instrument building, or communicating.

Every bit a social action, science inevitably reflects social values and viewpoints. The history of economical theory, for case, has paralleled the development of ideas of social justice—at one time, economists considered the optimum wage for workers to be no more than what would simply barely let the workers to survive. Before the twentieth century, and well into it, women and people of colour were essentially excluded from well-nigh of science by restrictions on their education and employment opportunities; the remarkable few who overcame those obstacles were fifty-fifty then likely to have their work belittled by the science establishment.

The direction of scientific research is afflicted by informal influences within the civilisation of science itself, such as prevailing opinion on what questions are most interesting or what methods of investigation are almost likely to be fruitful. Elaborate processes involving scientists themselves have been developed to decide which inquiry proposals receive funding, and committees of scientists regularly review progress in various disciplines to recommend general priorities for funding.

Science goes on in many dissimilar settings. Scientists are employed by universities, hospitals, business and industry, authorities, contained enquiry organizations, and scientific associations. They may work lone, in small-scale groups, or equally members of large research teams. Their places of work include classrooms, offices, laboratories, and natural field settings from infinite to the lesser of the sea.

Considering of the social nature of science, the broadcasting of scientific information is crucial to its progress. Some scientists nowadays their findings and theories in papers that are delivered at meetings or published in scientific journals. Those papers enable scientists to inform others almost their piece of work, to expose their ideas to criticism past other scientists, and, of course, to stay abreast of scientific developments around the earth. The advocacy of information science (knowledge of the nature of information and its manipulation) and the development of information technologies (particularly reckoner systems) bear upon all sciences. Those technologies speed up data collection, compilation, and assay; make new kinds of analysis practical; and shorten the time between discovery and application.

Science Is Organized Into Content Disciplines and Is Conducted in Various Institutions

Organizationally, science tin can be thought of equally the collection of all of the different scientific fields, or content disciplines. From anthropology through zoology, there are dozens of such disciplines. They differ from 1 another in many ways, including history, phenomena studied, techniques and language used, and kinds of outcomes desired. With respect to purpose and philosophy, nonetheless, all are as scientific and together make upwards the same scientific endeavour. The advantage of having disciplines is that they provide a conceptual construction for organizing research and enquiry findings. The disadvantage is that their divisions do not necessarily match the manner the world works, and they can make communication difficult. In whatsoever case, scientific disciplines do not have fixed borders. Physics shades into chemical science, astronomy, and geology, as does chemistry into biology and psychology, and and then on. New scientific disciplines (astrophysics and sociobiology, for instance) are continually being formed at the boundaries of others. Some disciplines grow and break into subdisciplines, which then become disciplines in their own right.

Universities, industry, and government are also part of the structure of the scientific endeavour. University research usually emphasizes knowledge for its ain sake, although much of information technology is also directed toward practical issues. Universities, of course, are also peculiarly committed to educating successive generations of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Industries and businesses usually emphasize research directed to practical ends, merely many also sponsor enquiry that has no immediately obvious applications, partly on the premise that it will be practical fruitfully in the long run. The federal government funds much of the research in universities and in industry but too supports and conducts enquiry in its many national laboratories and research centers. Private foundations, public-interest groups, and state governments besides support enquiry.

Funding agencies influence the direction of science by virtue of the decisions they make on which research to support. Other deliberate controls on science upshot from federal (and sometimes local) regime regulations on inquiry practices that are deemed to be dangerous and on the treatment of the human and fauna subjects used in experiments.

There Are More often than not Accepted Ethical Principles in the Carry of Science

Nigh scientists acquit themselves according to the ethical norms of science. The strongly held traditions of accurate recordkeeping, openness, and replication, buttressed past the disquisitional review of 1's work by peers, serve to go on the vast bulk of scientists well within the bounds of ethical professional behavior. Sometimes, still, the pressure to get credit for being the get-go to publish an idea or observation leads some scientists to withhold data or even to falsify their findings. Such a violation of the very nature of science impedes science. When discovered, it is strongly condemned past the scientific community and the agencies that fund research.

Some other domain of scientific ethics relates to possible impairment that could result from scientific experiments. I aspect is the treatment of live experimental subjects. Modern scientific ideals crave that due regard must be given to the health, comfort, and well-being of beast subjects. Moreover, inquiry involving man subjects may be conducted just with the informed consent of the subjects, even if this constraint limits some kinds of potentially of import research or influences the results. Informed consent entails full disclosure of the risks and intended benefits of the research and the correct to pass up to participate. In addition, scientists must non knowingly field of study coworkers, students, the neighborhood, or the customs to health or property risks without their knowledge and consent.

The ethics of scientific discipline as well relates to the possible harmful effects of applying the results of research. The long-term effects of scientific discipline may be unpredictable, but some idea of what applications are expected from scientific work tin be ascertained by knowing who is interested in funding it. If, for instance, the Department of Defense offers contracts for working on a line of theoretical mathematics, mathematicians may infer that it has application to new military machine technology and therefore would likely exist subject area to secrecy measures. Military or industrial secrecy is acceptable to some scientists but not to others. Whether a scientist chooses to piece of work on research of peachy potential risk to humanity, such as nuclear weapons or germ warfare, is considered past many scientists to be a matter of personal ethics, not one of professional ideals.

Scientists Participate in Public Affairs Both as Specialists and as Citizens

Scientists tin can bring information, insights, and analytical skills to bear on matters of public business. Often they can assistance the public and its representatives to understand the likely causes of events (such as natural and technological disasters) and to guess the possible effects of projected policies (such as ecological effects of various farming methods). Often they tin show to what is not possible. In playing this advisory role, scientists are expected to exist especially careful in trying to distinguish fact from interpretation, and enquiry findings from speculation and opinion; that is, they are expected to make full use of the principles of scientific enquiry.

Still, scientists can seldom bring definitive answers to matters of public fence. Some issues are too circuitous to fit within the current telescopic of scientific discipline, or there may be little reliable information available, or the values involved may lie outside of science. Moreover, although there may be at any one time a broad consensus on the majority of scientific knowledge, the understanding does non extend to all scientific issues, permit alone to all science-related social problems. And of class, on problems outside of their expertise, the opinions of scientists should bask no special credibility.

In their work, scientists get to great lengths to avoid bias—their own as well as that of others. Just in matters of public interest, scientists, like other people, can be expected to be biased where their own personal, corporate, institutional, or community interests are at stake. For example, because of their delivery to scientific discipline, many scientists may understandably be less than objective in their behavior on how science is to be funded in comparison to other social needs.

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Copyright © 1989, 1990 by American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Source: http://www.project2061.org/publications/sfaa/online/chap1.htm

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