Science is one among many of the systematic ways of discovering facts, predicting outcomes and talking about the uncertainty of this material
mystery that surrounds us.
It is a form of discourse based on a disciplined inquiry to address the inherent uncertainties of material relations or physical existence.
Science may be thought of as a methodical, logical and refutable examination of three attributes:
Characteristics of scientific knowing:
diagram table | chain of being | hypothesis testing | dialectical method | laws
Galileo Galilei | Charles Darwin | Albert Einstein
Scientific information, intelligence or knowledge of the natural world examines, explains and considers both the largest and the tiniest pieces our physical existence; so we say that such knowledge divides the macrocosm from the microcosm. Below is a rendering of the tiniest quarks which form the experimentally verifiable smallest features of the microcosm and a composite photograph of the visible universe, or the maximum extent we may see the macrocosm.
microcosm
Material things
come in two relative or
different sizes
| small | large |
|
strings leptons molecules |
organs bodies planets galaxies black holes |
Science is at once a means and a set of related findings that considers all information derived from experience and developed by rational thought along a spectrum of alternatives.
One simple example of opposites on a spectrum of mass is that, to us there seems to be high energy, short wave radiation emitted from atoms and low, energy, long wave radiation emitted as heat from bodies.
Science refers to both how things are knowable and what is known:
The means or way to know something is referred to as methods.
The body of knowledge discovered by such means is called a discipline.
Scala naturae
Between the extremities of neutrinos and black holes: are electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, compounds, molecules, viruses, cells, organs, organ systems, organisms, planets, suns neutron stars, red giants and white dwarfs, galaxies, galactic clusters, quasars and pulsars, each in increasing size on above the other as if along a great chain of being!
Light
The visible spectrum of radiation is called light
Science then is a dichotomous use of dialectical thought processes to reason about the natural world so that theories in the form of hypotheses may be tested against real evidence from actual experiments; the goal of these tests is to distinguish what is most predictable from that which is insubstantial, too poorly understood, or unsolvable.
| Methodological approaches: | Analytical | Synthetic |
|
inductive |
Darwin |
Kepler |
|
deductive |
Boyle |
Lavoisier |
Instead of a method for revealing "truths," science is most accurately characterized as a process used to determine the degree of uncertainty inherent in worldly knowledge.
See methodology for more information on this topic.
Science shapes our worldviews more accurately.
Once tested, hypotheses that stand the critical scrutiny of this skeptical procedure are referred to as theories whose veritable importance and widespread application cause them to be referred to as laws, or natural laws.
Laws, for example, constitute the foundations for a body of knowledge:
the second law of thermodynamics
the law of meiotic segregation and crossover
the law of general relativity
the law of gravity
Light bends around massive bodies with gravitationally powerful fields in space!
End of science lesson three: revealing the order in the mystery
lesson one: on the meaning and confusion of terms
lesson two: means of knowing the enveloping mystery.
lesson four: The body of knowledge about this mystery.
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