What is Science?

What is Science?

• Science is based on observation and reason, combining rationalism and empiricism.
• It observes the world and describes general rules that govern it.
• Empiricism guides scientists in understanding flaws in their reasoning.

Epistemology and Related Terms

• Epistemology: coming to knowledge of things in different ways.
• Scholasticism: encompasses religion, faith, and belief in authoritative figures or scripture as the source of knowledge.
• Rationalism: theory that reason provides the primary basis for knowledge, ability to reason out truth.
• Empiricism: experience is the sole source of knowledge in the world, worldview is a factor of sense perception.

Scientific Method and Components

• Ask questions, make a hypothesis, make a prediction using hypothesis, test the prediction, and analyze the results.
• Scientific Fact: observations made in nature.
• Hypothesis: gives rise to a prediction, must be testable/falsifiable and observable.
• Scientific Law: statement that does not have an explanation.
• Scientific Theory: incorporates observation, laws, and accepted hypothesis into a statement, has an explanation.

Hypothesis and Falsifiability

• A legitimate workable hypothesis must be testable or falsifiable.
• Test null hypothesis and not alternative or research hypothesis.
• Avoid Type 1 error (false positive) and Type 2 error.

Scholasticism, Rationalism, and Empiricism

• Scholasticism: faith and belief in authoritative figures or scripture as the source of knowledge.
• Rationalism: reason provides the primary basis for knowledge.
• Empiricism: experience is the sole source of knowledge in the world.
• Science combines rationalism and empiricism.

Experimental and Historical Science

• Experimental science: perform experiments in a lab or controlled environment.
• Historical science: deals with events that happened in the past, uses evidence available today to learn about them.

Theories and Their Functions

• Theories help us understand patterns in nature, predict what might happen in new situations, and lead to new discoveries.
• Theories are important in science.

Assumptions in Modern Science

• 1. Man can understand the universe.
• 2. Theories should be quantitative and testable.
• 3. Simple Laws are better (Occam's Razor).
• 4. Uniformitarianism – laws of nature are the same everywhere.
• 5. Mechanism (naturalism)

Faith in Science

• Faith is not applied in science in the same way as religious faith.
• Statistical significance (p ≤ 0.5) is used to determine the validity of scientific findings.

Historical Court Cases

• Butler Act: unlawful to teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man.