Lately we have heard a great deal about following “the science” but different persons seem to have different ideas of what constitutes “the science”. So what is “the science”?
I recently was at a church at which the pastor declared that he did not like science. This pastor enjoys much technology that science has brought him so why would he not like science?
The problem is that many do not understand what science is. Many think science is a set of facts about the natural world. However, the first class on science that I took in college emphasized that science is not a set of facts but is a process–a process of discovering how our physical world functions. This process consists of developing a hypothesis, testing that hypothesis, revising the hypothesis based upon test results, and then repeating the process. This is a never ending process.
if scientists believe science is an accumulation of facts, they close their mind to information that might challenge those facts. The history of science teaches us the wisdom of this tenant of science because scientists once believed in all manner of ideas that we consider erroneous today and undoubtedly future generations will look at some of our current scientific “facts” as humorous. Scientists once believed that space was filled with an ether. Now we believe space to be a vacuum. Scientists once believed that catastrophes had no part in shaping our earth (uniformitarianism). Now scientists believe that meteorite impacts have caused the extinction of various species of animals at various points in time. In the 1700s, scientist scoffed at the rural folks who told them that rocks fell from the sky and denied what we now know as meteorites existed. Now scientists go to great lengths to find meteorites and study them. If you read any science periodical, you will constantly find research that challenges what we know and understand. As a recent article articles on brown dwarfs and exoplanets states: “Nature does not abide by the rules laid out by the International Astronomical Union” [1] or any other scientific organization.
While science provides us with the technology that has made vast improvements to our lives, we must recognize that science is a human endeavor and like all human endeavors, it is fallible and incomplete. What many people call science is just our current understanding of what is known about our world. This understanding might be valid or it might not. Science, for the foreseeable future, will be constantly revising its beliefs as it discovers new evidence. This is the way science works.
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[1] Caroline Morley, “The In-Betweeners”, Sky & Telescope, March 2022, p. 39.
