Graeme

I've noticed in this forum and in many other discussions that 'science' is often spoken of as almost a personal sort of entity 'science does this, science does that, science works this way or that way'...

The truth is (as every scientist and well-educated person knows), science is a METHOD first and foremost. This is so obvious to most scientists, I think, that it gets lost - it is much easier to speak of the ages of scientific progress as an amorphous 'character', saying things like 'science has proven' or 'science shows us that...' - but I suggest that perhaps this is irresponsible when we are faced with ignorance and prejudice on the scale of which we see it today.

'Science' hasn't proven anything. PEOPLE have used the scientific method to prove many things, and hypothesize about many more.

Does this 'personification' of science bar less-educated folks from realizing the method itself is very simple, and thus encourage pseudoscience, supersition, and general distrust of scientific findings or research?

[ July 24, 2002: Message edited by: Graeme ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Science isn't a method per se, but a collection of methods and values. Depending on how you think about values, you might subdivide it even further, into its politics, reward structures, inquiry postures, and methodological stances. For example, we might have a double blind controlled experiment as a method, a value that calls for open dissemination of information, a posture on inquiry that is fairly ruthless about turning everything in the world into an object for scientific scrutiny, a structure of rewards that includes the assignation of credit, methodological naturalism, intersubjective critique of results.....there's a lot going on in a "simple" scientific experiment.

Vorkosigan

Valentine Pontifex

Science is method (or collection of methods) of finding out things about the world.

But there is a secondary meaning, namely the results of obtained by those methods.

DireStraits

"Science" is a word derived from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge.

One should be careful to differentiate between the activity of science, which, as some have already pointed out, uses a number of well-tested methodologies in an attempt to provide knowledge, and the way that it is sometimes popularly (mis?)used to mean something that is somehow superior to all other areas of knowledge.

It is this misuse that creationists sieze upon when they claim that they have something called creation "science". It's a buzzword that they think will convince people that they have an approach that can compete with the almighty "Science", which they are probably correct in thinking so many people equate with "TRUTH".

Science, as an activity, with its methodologies and reasonable assumptions, is nothing more than the best method developed to find out about the natural world that we have developed. There are definitely some areas that it cannot inform us about, and at least one - the supernatural - which it specifically says it cannot deal with.

Shadowy Man

I have started to try and move away from using the word "science" and referring to myself as a "scientist".

This started when I got into a conversation with someone who basically implied that rational thinking and skepticism (i.e. the basic idea behind the scientific method) need not really extend beyond the "sciences".

For example, you don't really need to examine the reasons, apply statistical methods to understand, or really think logically about something "soft" like advertising, because that's not "science". This was the argument I heard and was quite dumbfounded.

I think a lot of people may have this same kind of attitude, which inevitably leads to credulity about things that are outside of what they have decided "science" is.

Am I making sense?