Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.

3 1
What is Science?

Many people think of science as a bunch of facts, a
giant dictionary

but it is more: a process, a way of looking at the
world; a way of uncovering knowledge

there are many ways to uncover knowledge and to
better understand our world and ourselves:

music
art
poetry
philosophy
theology
history
scientific investigation
etc

each these disciplines can provide valid
information

all teach us something important

but each addresses different questions or different
aspects of a question

eg. science can show us how to clone animals & plants,
how to improve crops, how to produce stem cells, etc

eg. philosophy & religion can highlight the moral and
ethical implications of those advances and help us to
decide whether we should really be doing these things
or not, whether we have a right to do them

Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 2
eg. politics, government tells us how we can make fair laws
to protect all who are faced with such difficult decisions

eg. music and art can help to express our emotional
connections to the world

all are just different languages or ways to describe
the world

science is one process of understanding how the world
works

science is a language, a tool, a method for searching
for knowledge

(but only one of many sources of knowledge)

we use them all and need them all to produce a well
rounded understanding or our world

Each method of describing the world requires that we
follow a specific set of assumptions or criteria:

music ! tonal qualities, tempos, harmonies

art ! mix of colors, lines, perspective, depth

philosophy ! criteria of logic, inductive and deductive
reasoning

eg flower, a sunset, our place in the world

Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 3

to use scientific methods correctly we must make
certain assumptions and follow certain rules

otherwise we are NOT doing science

1. explanations must be guided by Natural Laws

the world works as a natural machine

mechanism (Descarte, 17
th
century)

mechanistic view !no vital spirits

reductionism: complex processes can be reduced to
simpler components

In science, we assume that everything is
reducible to simple understandable
natural explanations:

body functions
smile of a baby
even a persons philosophical and religious beliefs
(eg temporal lobe seizures)

there is no room in science for magic or
supernatural

eg. life or health is not the result of vital forces

eg. creation science is an oxymoron

eg. intelligent design assumes unnatural or
supernatural forces control the universe, it is
therefore not a scientific concept

Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 4
2. explanations must be falsifiable

scientists begin by making hypotheses
(=educated guesses) about what is going
on

scientific hypotheses are not necessarily more
likely to be true

but it must be able to be disproven
or its not a scientific explanation

eg. observation: my car wont start

possible hypotheses:
battery is dead
out of gas
aliens zapped car with an energy
sucking ray

the last one is NOT a scientific hypothesis

statements below are NOT valid subjects of
scientific investigation because they
cannot be disproven

eg. your neighbor insists that he was abducted by
aliens

eg. a friend believes that her astrological sign
accurately describes her personality or
future events

eg. the belief that God created the universe

all explanations must be testable by
Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 5
experimentation

an experiment is essentially an attempt to
disprove your hypothesis

eg. virtually ALL strides in medical treatments
have come from scientific knowledge

! from testing and retesting various
hypotheses or explanations

almost all rigorous testing of alternative
medical practices have shown them to
be ineffective

3. the process of science requires logical
reasoning

human nature generally tends to cause most
people to actually form an opinion first and
then collect information that seems to
support or make sense of the idea

eg. there are today people who firmly believe that the
earth is flat or that it is only 6000 years old
despite massive amounts of data that disprove
thess concepts

eg. politics: we tend to like or hate someone and see
all that happens through that lens. So much so
that we essentially dehumanize that person, and
its often hard to resist even when we know better

experimentation requires careful unbiased
observations

Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 6
! cant set out to prove something

eg. if you already believe in bigfoot or flying
saucers you are biased and cannot make
very effective scientific observations

eg. Loch Ness assumes something is there then
builds elaborate theory to explain data or
lack of data

eg. Bermuda Triangle
percentage of vessels lost in triangle are no
higher than anywhere else
but percentage of false losses are much
higher for this area

it is very difficult, even for scientists to
eliminate bias; to keep an open mind

a. one way to reduce bias is that the same
observation must be repeatable by
others

eg. one (or a few) persons claim of UFO or
abduction is not a scientific observation

! testamonials are not scientific data

when many people see the same UFO and
their observations are unrelated in any way
and can produce unambiguous physical
evidence then UFOs will be accepted as
scientific fact

b. in designing an experiment it is best to
pose question (hypothesis) as an
either/or statement
Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 7

a given question may have 1000s of
logical answers but only one is correct,

therefore the chances are high that a
random guess will be wrong

eg. observation: my car wont start

hypotheses: battery is dead
wiring is fried
out of gas
someone stole the
distributor cap

must choose each one at a time and test it
until you

c. experiments must be rigorously controlled

! but must be aware of your assumptions

4. statistical analysis is a powerful tool to sort
through large numbers of observations
(data) and likely conclusions

but must be used correctly; one can lie with statistical
methods that are misused

eg. from huge amounts of data collected we can
logically conclude that consumption of
pickles is dangerous & can cause:
cancer
war
communism
auto accidents

Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 8
data:
those born in 1839 who ate pickles
have sufferend 100% mortality
rate
rats force fed 20 lbs of pickles a day for
a month ended up with bulging
abdomens, poor health and loss of
appetite
99.9% of cancer victims had eaten
pickles sometimes in their lives
100% of all soldiers
96.8% of communist sympathizers
99.7% of those involved in car
accidents

5. the simplest logical explanation is the
preferred one (=Occams Razor)

Extraordinary hypotheses require
extraordinary evidence

eg bigfoot, ufos, astrology, etc

6. scientific explanations must have predictive
value

eg. if an apple falls to the ground today, you can
predict that it will do so tomorrow and the day
after

the scientific method is a self-correcting
process

it is the ONLY source of knowledge that is self
correcting

scientists think like everyone else but with
more awareness of the possibility that they
may be wrong!
Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 9

versus a politician who must act like he can never
be wrong

or theologian who accepts a concept on faith
alone, with no experimentation

7. the strongest explanations that have survived
numerous attempts to disprove them
become theories

A theory is an hypothesis that has been
repeatedly verified, not disproven

the word Theory in general use is used for any idea
someone has on a topic; a hunch

in science an hypothesis is a hunch

a theory is an hypothesis that has been repeatedly tested,
1000s of times, in many different ways by many
different people and the results always support the
hypothesis; never disprove it.

we sometimes hear the rationalization for not valuing a
scientific theory that its just a theory

but then;

its just a theory that the sun rises every morning

its just a theory that the heart pumps blood in
the body

its just a theory that penicillin can be used to
effectively treat some bacterial infections

theories are not speculation
Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 10

!they are supported by massive amount of
evidence

a theory is a scientific fact

its as close to the truth as a scientist can get

but we havent proven a thing

!nothing has been (is ever) proven
in science

but only need one disproof

theories do not last indefinitely

most theories have a very short life span as
originally proposed

! they are only temporary truths

few survive more than a couple of years
without being revised or discarded

as more and more tests are done the theory is
revised, remolded, tweaked to be even
more precise and more accurate

but only rarely does the entire theory get
discarded

Defining Science What is Science, Ziser, Lecture Notes, 2011.3 11
eg. spontaneous generation

eg. earth centric solar system

they dont necessarily become incorrect, just
obsolete for some situations

as theories are refined they become more
inclusive and are able to make stronger
predictions

replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is more
subtly wrong

eg. theory of agriculture

seed sprouts
seed sprouts better with water
seed sprouts better under soil with water
add manure
prevent disease
root nodules
mycorrhizae
etc.

as theory is refined it becomes more and more
accurate at predicting future events

eg. Heredity
something in cell transmits traits to offspring (Mendel)
it is in nucleus
it is in chromosomes
its either proteins or DNA
its DNA
specific genes identified

when we find exceptions to a current theory we
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are usually discovering new factors that might
influence a particular outcome

sometimes a theory becomes so powerful at
predicting that it becomes a natural law

!implies there are NO exceptions

eg. an apple always falls to the ground
until the 50s anyway

! one exception even a law must be altered
or trashed

eg. Law of Gravity became just a small part of a
more complete Theory of Relativity

Science can never explain everything

only those things that can be investigated using
correct assumptions

eg. science will never be able to:

define right and wrong?
why we are here?
is there life after death?
is there a god

these are not scientific questions

they are best studied in other disciplines