OK, so what is science?

by Deb on June 18, 2009

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Coran June 18, 2009 at 10:32 pm

Good summary. I think more fundamental than testing is observation. Observations give us questions and our observations inform, falsify or support the answer we come up with.

I’ve heard people say that something like the theory of evolution isn’t scientific because it can’t be tested in an experiment – it would take too long. Leaving aside the fact that it has been observed in experiments, I say “So what?”. An experiment is simply an observation where you control the variables.

The fact we can’t bury a skeleton and fold it through the earth’s crust fr 200 million years doesn’t negate our observation of fossils, or our theory that they’re the remains of ancient life forms, or the predictions that theory makes about further observations we might make.

Deb June 18, 2009 at 10:48 pm

Thanks, Coran. You’re right, observation has to come first, because we have to have something to make theories about.

Incidentally, it’s a common misconception that evolutionary theory doesn’t test predictions. It does, just not about what is going to evolve into what. Because it is a theory about relationships, it can make predictions based on those. For example, I can predict that chimps and humans will have more similar blood chemistry than humans and crayfish, because they have a closer common ancestor to have inherited that blood chemistry from. This is the same as saying you will be more like your brother than you are like your third cousin fifteen times removed. And that prediction has been tested and shown to be correct. Other theories about the development of life cannot make these predictions – if life was created by ‘The Great Token Stringer’ (to copy Stephen Jay Gould) then he could put any blood chemistry he wanted in any animal. There is no reason to expect (ie predict) that humans would be like chimps. In fact many of our common sense expectations about living things are actually testable predictions of evolutionary theory.

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