What Is Science?

[Sean Nash]

Use the thread below to engage in reflection about topics that were discussed in class last week. Discuss any "aha's" you had during our readings and or discussions. What did you learn? What finally became clear in your head? What surprised you? What might still be confusing?

Feel free to direct your post to one or more of the above questions, or try to frame your comments around one or both of the following "big ideas" from class...

What is science?
-and/or-
The role of questions and hypotheses in science.

Remember to best text-based in your responses when and where appropriate.

In addition, be sure to include information from our class reading today. You can find this information here.

[Marcy Withrow]

I always kind of thought that proving was a part of science. When a scientist discovered something then they have "proven" it to be true. But, this reading taught me that there is no such thing as proof in science. When I read this it puzzled me to no end. I found myself trying to analyze what this meant. I found out that maybe it means hypothesis can always be rejected in some way, if not now then in the future, making the answer almost always unknown. The hypothesis can be supported really well, but there's always that tiny chance that something can find it false.

Since nothing in science is proven, then where do facts come from? For example, we know for a fact living things need water, it's essential for life. Isn't that a part of science, wasn't there an experiment long ago to find that true? But, it isn't proven is it? This makes me wonder why. Maybe there is a creature in the future that doesn't have to live with water, then that would make the fact false. Maybe, this is what it is meaning in the article; that nothing can be proven because certain things could occur that could make a fact false. Even though the hypothesis is 99.9% supportive, there's always that slim chance that something could change it.

I also found it interesting that the article talks about "rejecting your hypothesis." I never really thought about it, but maybe rejecting it instead of accepting it is the better route to go. The article says to "list all the possible explanations you can think of." Once you make a list and hypothesis to go with them then you can start testing. I think a key sentence in this article is "you have proven nothing, but you may be able to infer..." This tells me that if proven isn't in science then infering definantly is. So, back to my example above about water being essential for life. Maybe if that fact isn't proven it is a BIG inference. Such a big inference that we believe it to be very true. That is until some unknown creature comes along and changes all of that.

My "Aha!" moment was definantly "there is no such thing as proof in science." It's crazy how the word "proven" has an influence on the choices we make. I believe the article also mentions that it's persuasive when a commercial says the product has been "proven by scientists." So, really we've all been living a lie when we trust the word "proven." But, at least we know now.

[Marcy Withrow]

I read an article called "a science checklist." It goes into detail about what science is, or at least the boundaries. At the bottom of the page there's a checklist. I think one of the most interesting one is "Relies on evidence." I realized this is very true when talking about science. Without evidence you could never explain how your hypothesis was supported or not. If you don't have evidence when someone is bringing up a debate with you then how can you show them you think you're right? You need evidence!

I also think "leads to ongoing research" on the checklist is interesting too; it relates to the reading from yesterday. This supports the idea that an unsupported hypothesis is better than a supported one, for the fact that research can keep going. More questions will come up when rejected making the research ongoing.

[Coleman Wade Babcock]

i like your statement " there is no proof in science" cause i have to agree with you that i thought science was to prove or "answer" also. but after last class i realized that science (or the scientific method) is never really answered and there is always room for revision

[Hunter Ewart]

In still confused about what science actually is? Is it the study of life or what because i know there is all different areas of science that study different things i'm just not sure what science is. I learned that science stereo typing for scientist is very comman. Most people see scientist with wild hair, glasses and a white lab coat with chemicals spilling out of a beeker. Honestly thats what i used to pereve tham as too until Mr.Nash explained that they are just regular people that just ask more questions then most. Science is a more complicated process than i actually thought is alot of questions that you constantly have to keep asking until you have come to a successful conclusion.

[Shandis Cruz]

I totally agree. Science is really complex. It definitely is a subject that makes you think above and beyond...but I think that's the best part! I'm with you on being confused of what science really is, because there is a ton of possible definitions.

[Erin Nash]

Hunter,
The study of life is one field of science - this field is Biology. But......Biology can be broken down even further - into fields like Zoology (the study of animals), or Botany (the study of plants), BUT, these can be broken down even further (an Entomologist just studies bugs - some Entomologists just study beetles, or one species of beetle).

So this is why we talk about how science is limited to the study of the natural world. As you can see, science encompasses many things.

[Shelby Hawkins]

I read a really interesting piece on the Berkeley website about scientists are diverse. We talked about scientists being diverse in how they look. We did not, however, talk about how they have different tendencies. Some of them are more mathematically inclined, and do a lot of formulas during experimentation. Some like to be in the field. Some like to be in a lab. I just thought it was interesting that they were even more diverse than I had thought about or we had discussed!

[Taylor Woodruff]

Ok... well I'm going to have to start off by saying that science is kinda complicated in a simple way if you really think about it. There's so many different ways that you can look at it (which is kinda why it's simple because there's a lot of different outlooks on it, so it's kinda hard to be wrong). Like our class came up with ideas that it was discovering something new to understanding the past, present, and future of well pretty much everything hah. So, really all of our answers were pretty much right just in different view points.

Even though, to me at least, there's a lot of right answers to what science is I decided to go to the handy dandy wikipedia (because Mrs. Corey said it was ok) and it pretty much said that it was knowledge because science comes from the latin word scientia which means knowledge. It also said that it was knowledge based around the scientific method.. which I thought was weird because we had to define that in class too! hah

But, pretty much I'm just going to say that science is using knowledge to make discoveries about the past, present, and future :p

[Taylor Woodruff]

Above I wrote about what science is and does.. but I never really thought about what it can't do. So, when i went to the link that lead to what we read today... I saw "Science has limits: a few things that science does not do" so i decided to read it because it never even crossed my mind what science couldn't do.

So, when I began reading I thought it was interesting that science can't determine whether things are good or bad, or right or wrong. It also doesn't tell us how to use our knowledge. I found that to be really interesting because science is knowledge, but there's a lot of people who don't use their knowledge to their full potential .

[Ivory Baldwin]

In our class discussion last class i learned that CHA-CHA is not a very reliable source, any one could work for CHA-CHA when we typed in the question " What is Science?" We got a definition but it was a definition for something totally different. We also put the question " what is the scientific method?" and CHA-CHA gave us half of the process not the whole thing. So i would say we probably should not use CHA-CHA any more. I Learned that we have a stero type of what a scientist looks like. When we think of a scientist we draw a picture in our minds of a "Mad Scientist", and scientist do not always look crazy or wear a lab coat, not all scientist work with chemials - There are all different types of scientist. Like maybe many others I do not know the true meaning of What Science Is!! I think that the Definition is to discover and learn new things and to invent new things. Im not really sure? There are many different fields of science the definition could be many different possible things.

[Ivory Baldwin]

* This Picture shows that scientist look just like everyday people.

On berkeley I clicked on the tab What is Science? Because that is my biggest question. Just as i thought Science is many of different things. I don't think in my option that there is one set definition for what science is because science is always changing and "will never be finished". Also the passage that Mrs Nash read to us in class i liked because it is saying how the scientific method is to orderly. Science is unexpected and you never know what your going to get ,so how do you know the order you will have to proceed in.

[Blayr Bolton]

Nice picture!