I want to first thank you all for engaging in such lively discussion after my first blog post. I intend to respond to many of your comments, and I apologize in advance that I won't be able to get to them all. I have noticed certain themes emerging, however. So, before diving into new developments in the world of physics, biology, chemistry, paleontology, etc., perhaps it would be helpful to take some time to discuss how we do science.
Science and nature are not the same thing. This may seem like a semantic quibble, but it's an extremely important distinction if we're going to be able to discuss scientific topics in any meaningful way. Nature simply is. It is the inherent property of being, regardless of what we have to say about it. Nature is the stars, the trees, the animals, the atmosphere, the oceans, black holes, and all the discrete stuff in between. Nature is the particles that make up the stuff of the cosmos. Nature is the way this stuff behaves.
Science is a tool. Science is man-made, and therefore subject to all of the user error and after-the-fact "holy crap, we should have known better" insights that any other human endeavor has encountered. Science is not the reason that plants photosynthesize. They just do. It is their nature to undergo photosynthesis. Science is how we observe this phenomenon, interact with it, describe it, and gather evidence as to its consistency. Science is also how we manipulate nature to learn more about it, or in many cases, to utilize it to the advantage of promoting human interests (an exciting idea for a blog, but space won't allow it today. What do you think?).
Science is fundamentally self-correcting. In science, we strive to gather as much information as we can about the natural world. We are constantly comparing this information to our previously held theories to ensure that our theories don't need an overhaul. But please don't get me wrong: science is a man-made endeavor. It is still subject to human flaws, such as arrogance, oversight, greed, and pride. The best tool the scientific community has to counter these mistakes is consensus. Many different people are often exploring similar topics at the same time. I won't pretend that they aren't most likely competing for grant money or glory to be the first to describe a new phenomenon, but in this case, competition is one of the healthiest parts of the exploration process. Laboratories don't agree in science to "be nice;" they agree when they have to. They agree when the evidence supports the claim. This is not a perfect system, but it is the best system we have for understanding nature. It has worked for hundreds of years and although major errors have been encountered along the way, looking at where we stand with medical, technological, and computational advancements today, I'd say science has worked in our favor more than a handful of times.
I have no expectation that every man, woman, and child should strive to become a professional scientist. I have every expectation that every man, woman, and child should strive to become more scientifically literate. We don't have to perform laboratory experiments to think scientifically. A scientific worldview can be gained simply by reading, engaging with others, and perhaps most importantly, striving to possess two traits that all scientific thinkers embrace: skepticism and open-mindedness. Scientists don't claim to have all the answers. In fact, we often have more questions. This week, I want to discuss the how of science, not just the why. What does that mean to you? What would you like to talk nerdy about?
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Life may not be rare in the universe, but it seems to me that we hit the cosmic jackpot here. In the discussion of what happens with excess carbon dioxide, do we have a good handle on what will happen to our oxygen, and what the implications of a change in oxygen levels might mean?
On a more speculative track, I wonder if we have a good enough handle on what happened to the atmosphere on Mars and whether we, too, could actually lose our atmosphere? In what other ways (than global warming through excess atmospheric CO2) could living organisms like us destroy the balance of conditions that support life on planets?
All of my impurities and evils yet unkown
It is really hard to deliver a quality science and math curriculum with this staffing pattern. If we teach science at all, it is likely to be taught as a series of facts, or scattered units about particular subjects. Delivered in this way, science is stripped of its excitement. Elementary science taught by specialists, perhaps by math-science specialists, could combine a sense of wonder with an appreciation for the way in which scientists have historically answered the great questions about the universe in which we live.
All Day September by Roger Kuykendall
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2295/all-day-september
The Fourth R by George O. Smith
http://www.onread.com/book/The-Fourth-R-17950/
Eight Keys to Eden by Mark Clifton
http://www.mysterious-strange-weird.com/index-sensational-mysteries.html
http://www.onread.com/book/Eight-Keys-to-Eden-6514/
There Will Be School Tomorrow, by V. E. Thiessen
www.feedbooks.com/userbook/11643.pdf
THE YEAR WHEN STARDUST FELL by Raymond F. Jones
http://www.amazon.com/Year-When-Stardust-Fell/dp/1935774409
http://www.readcentral.com/book/Raymond-F-Jones/Read-The-Year-When-Stardust-Fell-Online
My suggestion (a dangerous one): What are the limits of the scientific method, and are scientific theories (even in areas like cosmology and particle physics) worth exploring if they're not directly observable (at least now).
Compare Sean Carroll's blog at Discover on string theory, inflation, and the multiverse:
http://discovermagazine.com/2011/oct/18-out-there-welcome-to-the-multiverse/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=
With Adam Frank's refutation on the need for evidence:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/10/25/141681286/waiting-for-new-universes?sc=fb&cc=fp
As Carroll notes, science and religion aren't necessarily the same thing, but what's the most effective retort against a claim that a scientific "belief" about a state of nature that's untestable or unobservable is different from a religious one?
An untestable or unobservable conjecture is usally based on soem test and observable principles and, in the future, may become testable.
How many Democrats believe in untested aspects of "Alternative" medicine, particularly homeopathic dilute solutions?
As a practicing research scientist, I would urge caution with these statements. As stated correctly, science is a tool. Yet by immersing your brain in the scientific method, you are by default, orienting your perceptions towards reductionism. For all the hype in current science about "systems", such research still appears to be about reducing a phenomenon to discrete parts and then re-building the model from what WE PERCEIVE to be the elemental participants. Many aboriginal cultures did not practice science as we define it, but a combination of maturity and observation yielded improvements in their (and clearly our) agriculture, medicine, and sociology (to use terms borrowed from our reductionist categorization). Indeed, in my students, skepticism and open-mindedness are not lacking......thoughtful observation is.
But the important thing is not just scientific method. Logic and critical thinking are essential to scientific method. If training and discipline in those areas had been more widespread, would it really have taken us so long to arrive at the structure of atoms? I suspect not.
Leo Toribio
Pittsburgh, PA
Democritus (assuming that is who made the claim) just happened to guess right. he had no data to support his idea.