An Introduction to Scientific Thinking

Spring in Wisconsin means rapid climate change. Today, for example, the temperature reached the upper 60’s in the afternoon, but even now in the night time darkness there are still areas of snow on the north sides of hills and houses. The weather warmed up over a limited period of time during the daylight, but the warmth was not around long enough to completely melt off all the snow before it dispersed after sundown.

Over the last week I have been writing about how beliefs about nature and life on this planet form the underpinnings of political forces seeking to change society. It is a testament to the success of science that every discussion about human life on a living planet is debated using the phrases of science, and since our political future depends on the outcome of these current debates, it is important to have a correct understanding of both what science is, and what science is not. The following article is a good starting point.

An Introduction to Scientific Thinking Dr. R. Timothy Patterson Department of Earth Sciences Carleton University Copyright © 1997 modified after: Steven D. Schafersman Department of Geology Miami University,

Science is a method of investigating nature--a way of knowing about nature--that discovers reliable knowledge about it. There are other methods of discovering and learning knowledge about nature, but science is the only method that results in the acquisition of reliable knowledge.

Reliable knowledge is knowledge that has a high probability of being true because its veracity has been justified by a reliable method. Please note that I do not, as some do, make a distinction between belief and knowledge. Every person has knowledge or beliefs, but not all of each person's knowledge is reliably true and justified. In fact, most individuals believe in things that are untrue or unjustified or both: most people possess a lot of unreliable knowledge and, what's worse, they act on that knowledge!

The scientific method is practiced within a context of scientific thinking, and scientific (and critical) thinking is based on three things: using empirical evidence (empiricism), practicing logical reasoning (rationalism), and possessing a skeptical attitude (skepticism) about presumed knowledge that leads to self-questioning, holding tentative conclusions, and being undogmatic (willingness to change one's beliefs). These three ideas or principles are universal throughout science; without them, there would be no scientific or critical thinking.

All knowledge is not the same. No knowledge is absolutely certain. Knowledge that can be called scientific must be observable, reproducible and above all able to withstand detailed doubt about its validity. Both the academic and corporate scientific communities are big money industries, where individuals have vested interests in cooperation, stability and good outward public appearance, and the media is devoid of critical scientific thought. Without the checking step of continual skepticism, the ideas that become widely accepted as science begin to drift into meaningless wishing or dogmas of faith.