What is Science?

Bill W. Tillery, Eldon D. Enger, Frederick C. Ross

From: Tillery, Enger and Ross, Integrated Science 2nd edition (McGraw-Hill, 2004) 12 – 18.

THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

Most humans are curious, at least when they are young, and are motivated to understand their
surroundings. These traits have existed since antiquity and have proven to be a powerful
motivation. In recent times the need to find out has motivated the launching of space probes to learn
what is "out there," and humans have visited the moon to satisfy their curiosity. Curiosity and the
motivation to understand nature were no less powerful in the past than today. Over two thousand
years ago the ancient Greeks lacked the tools and technology of today and could only make
conjectures about the workings of nature. These early seekers of understanding are known as
natural philosophers, and they observed, thought, and wrote about the workings of all of nature.
They are called philosophers because their understandings come from reasoning only, without
experimental evidence. Nonetheless, some of their ideas were essentially correct and are still in use
today. For example, the idea of matter being composed of atoms was first reasoned by certain
ancient Greeks in the fifth century B.C. The idea of elements, basic components that make up
matter, was developed much earlier but refined by the ancient Greeks in the fourth century B.C.
The concept of what the elements are and the concept of the nature of atoms have changed over
time, but the idea first came from ancient natural philosophers.

The Scientific Method

Some historians identify the time of Galileo and Newton, approximately three hundred years
ago, as the beginning of modern science. Like the ancient Greeks, Galileo and Newton were
interested in studying all of nature. Since the time of Galileo and Newton, the content of physical
science has increased in scope and specialization, but the basic means of acquiring understanding,
the scientific investigation, has changed little. A scientific investigation provides understanding
through experimental evidence, as opposed to the conjectures based on thinking only of the ancient
natural philosophers. … certain ancient Greeks described how objects fall toward the earth with a
thought-out, or reasoned, explanation. Galileo, on the other hand, changed how people thought of
falling objects by developing explanations from both creative thinking and precise measurement of
physical quantities, providing experimental evidence for his explanations. Experimental evidence
provides explanations today, much as it did for Galileo, as relationships are found from precise
measurements of physical quantities. Thus, scientific knowledge about nature has grown as
measurements and investigations have led to understandings that lead to further measurements and
investigations.
 What is a scientific investigation and what methods are used to conduct one? Attempts have
been made to describe scientific methods in a series of steps (define problem, gather data, make
hypothesis, test, make conclusion), but no single description has ever been satisfactory to all
concerned. Scientists do similar things in investigations but there are different approaches and
different ways to evaluate what they find. Overall, the similar things might look like this:

1. Observe some aspect of nature.

2. Propose an explanation for something observed.
3. Use the explanation to make predictions.
4. Test predictions by doing an experiment or by making more observations.
5. Modify explanation as needed.
6. Return to step 3.

The exact approach a scientist uses depends on the individual doing the investigation as well as
the particular field of science being studied.

Another way to describe what goes on during a scientific investigation is to consider what can
be generalized. There are at least three separate activities that seem to be common to scientists in
different fields as they conduct scientific investigations, and these generalized activities are:
• Collecting observations
• Developing explanations
• Testing explanations

No particular order or routine can be generalized about these common elements. In fact,
individual scientists might not even be involved in all three activities. Some, for example, might
spend all of their time out in nature, "in the field" collecting data and generalizing about their
findings. This is an acceptable means of scientific investigation in some fields of science. Yet, other
scientists might spend all of their time indoors, at computer terminals, developing theoretical
equations that offer explanations for generalizations made by others. Again, the work at a computer
terminal is an acceptable means of scientific investigation. Thus, there is not an order of five steps
that are followed, particularly by today's specialized scientists. This is one reason why many
philosophers of science argue there is no such thing as the scientific method. There are common
activities of observing, explaining, and testing in scientific investigations in different fields, and
these activities will be discussed next.

Explanations and Investigations

Explanations in the natural sciences are concerned with things or events observed, and there
can be several different means of developing or creating explanations. In general, explanations can
come from the results of experiments, from an educated guess, or just from imaginative thinking.
In fact, there are several examples in the history of science of valid explanations being developed
even from dreams. Explanations go by various names, each depending on intended use or stage of
development. For example, an explanation in an early stage of development is sometimes called a
hypothesis. A hypothesis is a tentative thought- or experiment-derived explanation. It must be
compatible with all observations and provide understanding of some aspect of nature, but the key
word here is "tentative." A hypothesis is tested by experiment and is rejected, or modified, if a
single observation or test does not fit. The successful testing of a hypothesis may lead to the design
of experiments, or it could lead to the development of another hypothesis, which could, in turn,
lead to the design of yet more experiments, which could lead to.. . . As you can see, this is a
branching, ongoing process that is very difficult to describe in specific terms. In addition, it can be
difficult to identify a conclusion, an endpoint in the process. The search for new concepts to
explain experimental evidence may lead from a hypothesis to a new theory, which results in more.
new hypotheses. This is why one of the best ways to understand scientific methods is to study the
history of science. Or, you can conduct a scientific investigation yourself.

In some cases a hypothesis may be tested by simply making additional observations. For
example, if you hypothesize that a certain species of bird uses cavities in trees as places to build
nests, you could observe several birds of the species and record the kinds of nests they build and
where they are built.

Another common method for testing a hypothesis involves devising an experiment. An

experiment is a re-creation of an event or occurrence in a way that enables a scientist to support or
disprove a hypothesis. This can be difficult since a particular event may be influenced by a great
many separate things. For example, the production of a song by a bird involves many activities of
the bird's nervous and muscular systems and is influenced by a wide variety of environmental
factors. It might seem that developing an understanding of the factors involved in birdsong
production is an impossible task. To help un clutter such situations, scientists have devised what is
known as a controlled experiment. A controlled experiment compares two situations that have all
the influencing factors identical except one. The situation used as the basis of comparison is called
the control group and the other is called the experimental group. The single influencing factor that
is allowed to be different in the experimental group is called the experimental variable.

The situation involving birdsong production would have to be broken down into a large
number of simple questions, as previously mentioned. Each question would provide the basis on
which experimentation would occur. Each experiment would provide information about a small
part of the total process of birdsong production. For example, in order to test the hypothesis that
male sex hormones are involved in stimulating male birds to sing, an experiment could be
performed in which one group of male birds had their testes removed (the experimental group),
while the control group was allowed to develop normally. After the experiment, the new data
(facts) gathered would be analyzed. If there were no differences between the two groups, scientists
could conclude that the variable evidently did not have a cause-and-effect relationship (i.e., was not
responsible for the event). However, if there were a difference, it would be likely that the variable
was responsible for the difference between the control and experimental groups. In the case of
songbirds, removal of the testes does change their singing behavior.
 Scientists almost never accept the results of a single experiment, since a proposed hypothesis
has to explain all experimental results. Otherwise, the hypothesis needs revision. For example, the
operation necessary to remove the testes of male birds might cause illness or discomfort in some
birds, resulting in less singing. A way to overcome this difficulty would be to subject all birds to
the same surgery but to remove the testes of only half of them. (The control birds would still have
their testes.) The results of the experiment are considered convincing only when there is one
variable, many replicates (copies) of the same experiment have been conducted, and the results are
consistent.

Furthermore, scientists often apply statistical tests to the results to help decide in an impartial
manner if the results obtained are valid (meaningful; fit with other knowledge), reliable (give the
same results repeatedly), and show cause-and-effect, or if they are just the result of random events.

During experimentation, scientists learn new information and formulate new questions that can
lead to yet more experiments. One good experiment can result in a hundred new questions and
experiments. The discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick resulted in
thousands of experiments and stimulated the development of the entire field of molecular biology.
Similarly, the discovery of molecules that regulate the growth of plants resulted in much research
about how the molecules work and which molecules might be used for agricultural purposes.

If the processes of questioning and experimentation continue, and evidence continually and
consistently supports the original hypothesis and other closely related hypotheses, the scientific
community will begin to see how these hypotheses and facts fit together into a broad pattern.

Scientific Laws

Sometimes you can observe a series of relationships that seem to happen over and over again.
There is a popular saying, for example, that "if anything can go wrong, it will" This is called
Murphy's law. It is called a law because it describes a relationship between events that seems to
happen time after time. If you drop a slice of buttered bread, for example, it can land two ways,
butter side up or butter side down. According to Murphy's law, it will land butter side down. With
this example, you know at least one way of testing the validity of Murphy's law.

Another "popular saying" type of relationship seems to exist between the cost of a houseplant
and how long it lives. You could call it the "law of houseplant longevity." The relationship is that
the life of a houseplant is inversely proportional to its purchase price. This "law" predicts that a $10
houseplant will wilt and die within a month, but a 504: houseplant will live for years. The inverse
relationship is between the variables of (1) cost and (2) life span, meaning the more you pay for a
plant the shorter the time it will live. This would also mean that inexpensive plants will live for a
long time. Since the relationship seems to occur time after time, it is called a law.
 A scientific law describes an important relationship that is observed in nature to occur
consistently time after time. The law is often identified with the name of a person associated with
the formulation of the law. For example, with all other factors being equal, an increase in the
temperature of the air in a balloon results in an increase in its volume. Likewise, a decrease in the
temperature results in a decrease in the total volume of the balloon. The volume of the balloon
varies directly with the temperature of the air in the balloon and this can be observed to occur
consistently time after time. This relationship was first discovered in the later part of the eighteenth
century by two French scientists, A. C. Charles and Joseph Gay-Lussac. Today, the relationship is
sometimes called Charles' law. When you read about a scientific law, you should remember that a
law is a statement that means something about a relationship that you can observe time after time in
nature.

Have you ever heard someone state that something behaved a certain way because of a
scientific law? For example, a big truck accelerated slowly because of Newton's laws of motion.
Perhaps this person misunderstands the nature of scientific laws. Scientific laws do not dictate the
behavior of objects, they simply describe it. They do not say how things ought to act but rather
how things do act. A scientific law is descriptive; it describes how things act.

Models and Theories

Often the part of nature being considered is too small or too large to be visible to the human eye
and the use of a model is needed. A model is a description of a theory or idea that accounts for all
known properties. The description can come in many different forms, such as an actual physical
model, a computer model, a sketch, an analogy, or an equation. No one has ever seen the whole
solar system, for example, and all you can see in the real world is the movement of the sun, moon,
and planets against a background of stars. A physical model or sketch of the solar system,
however, will give you a pretty good idea of what the solar system might look like. The physical
model and the sketch are both models since they give you a mental picture of the solar system.

At the other end of the size scale, models of atoms and molecules are often used to help us
understand what is happening in this otherwise invisible world. Also, a container of small,
bouncing rubber balls can be used as a model to explain the relationships of Charles' law. This
model helps you see what happens to invisible particles of air as the temperature, volume, and
pressure of the gas change. Some models are better than others, and models constantly change
along with our understanding about nature. Early twentieth-century models of atoms, for example,
were based on a "planetary model;' which had electrons in the role of planets moving around the
nucleus, which played the role of the sun. Today, the model has changed as our understandings
about the nature of the atom have changed. Electrons are now pictured as vibrating with certain
wavelengths, which can make standing waves only at certain distances from the nucleus. Thus the
model of the atom changed from one with electrons viewed as solid particles to one that views
them as vibrations on a string.
 The most recently developed scientific theory was refined and expanded during the 1970s. This
theory concerns the surface of the earth, and it has changed our model of what the earth is like. At
first, however, the basic idea of to day's accepted theory was pure and simple conjecture. The term
"conjecture" usually means an explanation or idea based on speculation, or one based on trivial
grounds without any real evidence. Scientists would look at a map of Africa and South America,
for example, and mull over how the two continents seem to be as pieces of a picture puzzle that had
moved apart. Any talk of moving continents was considered conjecture because it was not based
on anything acceptable as real evidence.

Many years after the early musings about moving continents, evidence was collected from
deep-sea drilling rigs that the ocean floor becomes progressively older toward the African and
South American continents. This was good enough evidence to establish the "seafloor spreading
hypothesis" that described the two continents moving apart.

If a hypothesis survives much experimental testing and leads, in turn, to the design of new
experiments with the generation of new hypotheses that can be tested, you now have a working
theory. A theory is defined as a broad, working hypothesis that is based on extensive experimental
evidence. For example, the "seafloor spreading hypothesis" did survive requisite experimental
testing, and together with other working hypotheses is today found as part of the plate tectonic
theory. The plate tectonic theory describes how the continents have moved apart, just like pieces of
a picture puzzle. Is this the same idea that was once considered conjecture? Sort of, but this time it
is supported by experimental evidence.

The term scientific theory is reserved for historic schemes of thought that have survived the test
of detailed examination for long periods of time. The atomic theory, for example, was developed in
the late 1800s and has been the subject of extensive investigation and experimentation over the last
century. The atomic theory and other scientific theories form the framework of scientific thought
and experimentation today. Scientific theories point to new ideas about the behavior of nature and
these ideas result in more experiments, more data to collect, and more explanations to develop. All
of this may lead to a slight modification of an existing theory, a major modification, or perhaps the
creation of an entirely new one. These activities continue in an ongoing attempt to satisfy the
curiosity of people by understanding nature.

SCIENCE, NON SCIENCE, AND PSEUDOSCIENCE

As you can see from the discussion of the nature of science, a scientific approach to the world
requires a certain way of thinking. There is an insistence on ample supporting evidence by
numerous studies rather than easy acceptance of strongly stated opinions. Scientists must separate
opinions from statements of fact. A scientist is a healthy skeptic.

Careful attention to detail is also important. Since scientists publish their findings and their
colleagues examine their work, there is a strong desire to produce careful work that can be easily
defended. This does not mean that scientists do not speculate and state opinions. When they do,
however, they take great care to clearly distinguish fact from opinion.

There is also a strong ethic of honesty. Scientists are not saints, but the fact that science is
conducted out in the open in front of one's peers tends to reduce the incidence of dishonesty. In
addition, the scientific community strongly condemns and severely penalizes those who steal the
ideas of others, perform shoddy science, or falsify data. Any of these infractions could lead to the
loss of one's job and reputation.
From Experimentation to Application

The scientific method has helped us to understand and control many aspects of our natural
world. Some information is extremely important in understanding the structure and functioning of
things in our world but at first glance appears to have little practical value. For example,
understanding the life cycle of a star may be important for people who are trying to answer
questions about how the universe is changing, but it seems of little practical value to the average
citizen. However, as our knowledge has increased, the time between first discovery to practical
application has decreased significantly.

For example, scientists known as genetic engineers have altered the chemical code system of
small organisms (microorganisms) so that they may produce many new drugs such as antibiotics,
hormones, and enzymes. The ease with which these complex chemicals are produced would not
have been possible had it not been for the information gained from the basic, theoretical sciences of
microbiology, molecular biology, and genetics. Our understanding of how organisms genetically
control the manufacture of proteins has led to the large scale production of enzymes. Some of these
chemicals can remove stains from clothing, deodorize, clean contact lenses, remove damaged skin
from burn patients, and "stone wash" denim for clothing.

Another example is Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and microbiologist. Pasteur was interested
in the theoretical problem of whether life could be generated from nonliving material. Much of his
theoretical work led to practical applications in disease control. His theory that there are
microorganisms that cause diseases and decay led to the development of vaccinations against rabies
and the development of pasteurization for the preservation of foods.

Science and Nonscience

The differences between science and non science are often based on the assumptions and
methods used to gather and organize information and, most important, the testing of these
assumptions. The difference between a scientist and a nonscientist is that a scientist continually
challenges and tests principles and assumptions to determine a cause-and-effect relationship,
whereas a nonscientist may not feel that this is important.

Once you understand the nature of science, you will not have any trouble identifying
astronomy, chemistry, physics, and biology as sciences. But what about economics, sociology,
anthropology, history, philosophy, and literature? All of these fields may make use of certain
central ideas that are derived in a logical way, but they are also nonscientific in some ways. Some
things cannot be approached using the scientific method. Art, literature, theology, and philosophy
are rarely thought of as sciences. They are concerned with beauty, human emotion, and speculative
thought rather than with facts and verifiable laws. On the other hand, physics, chemistry, geology,
and biology are always considered sciences.
 Music is an area of study in a middle ground where scientific approaches may be used to some
extent. "Good" music is certainly unrelated to science, but the study of how the human larynx
generates the sound of a song is based on scientific principles. Any serious student of music will
study the physics of sound and how the vocal cords vibrate to generate sound waves. Similarly,
economists use mathematical models and established economic laws to make predictions about
future economic conditions. However, the regular occurrence of unpredicted economic changes
indicates that economics is far from scientific, since the reliability of predictions is a central
criterion of science. Anthropology and sociology are also scientific in nature in many respects, but
they cannot be considered true sciences because many of the generalizations they have developed
cannot be tested by repeated experimentation. They also do not show a significantly high degree of
cause-and-effect, or they have poor predictive value.

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience ("pseudo" means "false") takes on the flavor of science but is not supportable as
valid or reliable. Often, the purpose of pseudoscience is to confuse or mislead. The area of nutrition
is flooded with pseudoscience. We all know that we must obtain certain nutrients like amino acids,
vitamins, and minerals from the food that we eat or we may become ill. Many scientific
experiments reliably demonstrate the validity of this information. However, in most cases, it has
not been proven that the nutritional supplements so vigorously promoted are as useful or desirable
as advertised. Rather, selected bits of scientific information (amino acids, vitamins, and minerals
are essential to good health) have been used to create the feeling that additional amounts of these
nutritional supplements are necessary or that they can improve your health. In reality, the average
person eating a varied diet will obtain all of these nutrients in adequate amounts, and nutritional
supplements are not required.

In addition, many of these products are labeled as organic or natural, with the implication that
they have greater nutritive value because they are organically grown (grown without pesticides or
synthetic fertilizers) or because they come from nature. The poisons curare, strychnine, and
nicotine are all organic molecules that are produced in nature by plants that could be grown
organically, but we would not want to include them in our diet.

Limitations of Science

By definition, science is a way of thinking and seeking information to solve problems.

Therefore, scientific methods can be applied only to questions that have a factual basis. Questions
concerning morals, value judgments, social issues, and attitudes cannot be answered using the
scientific methods. What makes a painting great? What is the best type of music? Which wine is
best? What color should I paint my car? These questions are related to values, beliefs, and tastes;
therefore, scientific methods cannot be used to answer them.
 Science is also limited by the ability of people to pry understanding from the natural world.
People are fallible and do not always come to the right conclusions, because information is lacking
or misinterpreted, but science is self-correcting. As new information is gathered, old incorrect ways
of thinking must be changed or discarded. For example, at one time people were sure that the sun
went around the earth. They observed that the sun rose in the east and traveled across the sky to set
in the west. Since they could not feel the earth moving, it seemed perfectly logical that the sun
traveled around the earth. Once they understood that the earth rotated on its axis, people began to
understand that the rising and setting of the sun could be explained in other ways. A completely
new concept of the relationship between the sun and the earth developed.

Although this kind of study seems rather primitive to us today, this change in thinking about
the sun and the earth was a very important step in understanding the universe and how the various
parts are related to one another. This background information was built upon by many generations
of astronomers and space scientists, and finally led to space exploration.

People also need to understand that science cannot answer all the problems of our time.
Although science is a powerful tool, there are many questions it cannot answer and many problems
it cannot solve. The behavior and desires of people generate most of the problems societies face.
Famine, drug abuse, and pollution are human-caused and must be resolved by humans. Science
may provide some tools for social planners, politicians, and ethical thinkers, but science does not
have, nor does it attempt to provide, all the answers to the problems of the human race. Science is
merely one of the tools at our disposal.