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What Is Science?

Science is not just a collection of facts, but a process of investigation to understand the natural world. Scientists develop hypotheses to explain observations and data, then design experiments to test these hypotheses. If experiments fail to reject a hypothesis, it may become a scientific theory. Theories survive as long as continued testing cannot prove them wrong. This process of attempting to falsify ideas is the standard model of the scientific method. While some theories are called "laws," these are still subject to change if new evidence arises that conflicts with them.

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Cain Martinez
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20 views

What Is Science?

Science is not just a collection of facts, but a process of investigation to understand the natural world. Scientists develop hypotheses to explain observations and data, then design experiments to test these hypotheses. If experiments fail to reject a hypothesis, it may become a scientific theory. Theories survive as long as continued testing cannot prove them wrong. This process of attempting to falsify ideas is the standard model of the scientific method. While some theories are called "laws," these are still subject to change if new evidence arises that conflicts with them.

Uploaded by

Cain Martinez
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What Is Science?

Science is not merely a body of facts; it is also a process of investigation. The standards that scientists use to assess their ideas and to decide which to acceptin some sense, those that are trueare the basis of much of our technological world. One of the guiding principles of science is that results should be reproducible; that is, other scientists should be able to get essentially the same result by repeating the same experiment or observation. Science is thus a self-checking way of carrying out investigations. Though acceptable scientific investigations are actually carried out in many ways, there is a standard model for the scientific method. In this standard model, one first looks at a body of data and makes educated guesses as to what might explain them. An educated guess is a hypothesis. Then one thinks of consequences that would follow if the hypothesis were true and tries to carry out experiments or make observations that test the hypothesis. If, at any time, the results are contrary to the hypothesis, then the hypothesis is discarded or modified. (There may, though, be other assumptions that could be modified or discarded instead, because they are inappropriate. Also, one needs to check for experimental or observational errors.) If the hypothesis passes its tests and is established in some basic framework or set of equations, it can be called a theory. If the hypothesis or theory survives test after test, it is accepted as being true. Still, at any time a new experiment or observation could show it was false after all. This process of falsification, being able to find out if a hypothesis or theory is false, is basic to the definition of science formulated by a leading set of philosophers of science. Sometimes, you see something described as a law or a principle or a fact. Laws of naturelike Keplers laws of planetary motion, Newtons laws of motion, or Newtons law of gravitation (see Chapter 5)are actually descriptions of how nature behaves, and they might in fact be incorrect. Newton used the word law (in Latin) over three hundred years ago. The words law and principle are historical usages

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