Browsing around the web this morning I had a “wow that’s true” moment when I came across a link to a brilliant Michael Crichton Speech. Crichton sounds a general warning about the way science is being misused and fraudulently represented to advance political agendas. I have been looking for this type of calm reasoning because for some time now I have been concerned the scientific method I learned has been totally left out of the rhetoric passing as scientific debate.
The scientific method is what makes some knowledge “scientific”. That is the essential fact missing from so much of the current discussion. The term scientist is an informal title used for individuals working in disciplines built upon scientific knowledge, but everything scientists do is not science. When a physician talks about the stock market, the commentary does not make the stock market a medical procedure. When a pastor talks about health insurance that does not make the policy language religious text.
The defining property of scientific knowledge is universally reproducible and observable results. The power of scientific knowledge arises from this complete dependability of results. If you start with one set of conditions and take one set of actions, then you will always get the same conclusion. Science is a small part of the entire wealth of human knowledge, and incorporating some science as a aspect of a larger scholarly effort does not make the entirety of the product and conclusions of that effort scientific.
There is a distinction between math and science and the difference seems to be overlooked in discussions between scientific professionals, and even more so in the public presentations of the scientific community to the general public. Science is limited to the observable properties of the real world. Science describes a portion of how the existing world works, but it does not predict the whole of the future. On the other hand, mathematics is an internally consistent logical language that can be used to describe the existing world, but can also be used to describe imaginary and impossible events as well as events which have never happened. Houdini knew fortune tellers weren’t scientists.
The scientific method is what makes some knowledge “scientific”. That is the essential fact missing from so much of the current discussion. The term scientist is an informal title used for individuals working in disciplines built upon scientific knowledge, but everything scientists do is not science. When a physician talks about the stock market, the commentary does not make the stock market a medical procedure. When a pastor talks about health insurance that does not make the policy language religious text.
The defining property of scientific knowledge is universally reproducible and observable results. The power of scientific knowledge arises from this complete dependability of results. If you start with one set of conditions and take one set of actions, then you will always get the same conclusion. Science is a small part of the entire wealth of human knowledge, and incorporating some science as a aspect of a larger scholarly effort does not make the entirety of the product and conclusions of that effort scientific.
There is a distinction between math and science and the difference seems to be overlooked in discussions between scientific professionals, and even more so in the public presentations of the scientific community to the general public. Science is limited to the observable properties of the real world. Science describes a portion of how the existing world works, but it does not predict the whole of the future. On the other hand, mathematics is an internally consistent logical language that can be used to describe the existing world, but can also be used to describe imaginary and impossible events as well as events which have never happened. Houdini knew fortune tellers weren’t scientists.
