Millions and millions of people from all the walks of life and all over the world who are novices to the field of science hold many different misconceptions about the true nature of science. Below are some of the most important misconceptions that are known and promoted today about science and how the scientific knowledge or the scientific evidence is collected in nature:
(i) Millions of people all over the world believe that science or the scientific knowledge is absolute in nature.
(ii) Many believe that science is all about experiments, data collection and treatment.
(iii) Many people believe that science has all the answers to everything in nature and science is always right or 100% accurate and exact.
(iv) Many people believe that scientific laws and scientific theories are both identical or the same and they are also both absolute or unchangeable.
(v) Many people believe that science is totally objective and never bias or subjective in nature.
(vi) Many people believe that there is only one universal scientific method in the world for doing science.
(vii) Many people believe that the cultures, national politics and social issues of today do not influence the direction of science in the world.
(viii) Many people believe that all scientific findings become public records.
Is science objective, bias or subjective in nature? Are all scientific findings made public by become public records? Scientific research in any society or nation is primarily driven by the prevailing political, economic, social and cultural forces of the day in that nation. Scientific findings that have national or international security implications are sealed forever from the public eye as classified records.
I will now address these misconceptions above one by one:
(i) Scientific knowledge is never absolute in nature, but tentative and evidence-based. What we know in science today that we call scientific knowledge is based on the scientific evidence that is currently or presently available today also. New scientific evidence will lead to a new scientific knowledge. The world of science is full of these examples.
(ii) Science is not all about experiments. Astronomy and quantum physics are branches of science that do not require any experimentations to obtain the relevant scientific evidence that may lead to the new scientific knowledge. The direct observations that are made from the astronomical tools on the ground and in the space are used to generate astronomical knowledge. Mathematical models using the high-level mathematics produced the field of quantum physics.
(iii) Science does not have all the needed answers to everything in nature. Science does not know everything in life.
(iv) Scientific laws and scientific theories are not the same. Both are the two different and distinct types of scientific knowledge that are both equally needed to understand our natural world better. Scientific laws predict what will happen in nature and scientific theory explains why it happens in nature. Scientific laws are also mathematical in nature and scientific theories are self-descriptive or self-explanatory in nature. Laws explains our natural world and theory describes our natural world. Laws and theories are both not absolute. Laws and theories can change if a new scientific knowledge is obtained. Laws will stay as laws and theories will stay as theories. Laws do not become theories and theories do not become laws.
(v) There is no one universally accepted scientific method in the world of science. Scientists approach science in many different ways and never in one uniform universal way.
(vi) Science is never objective, it is subjective and bias in nature. Scientists choose what interest them personally to study in nature or what the government or the funding agencies will finance. The political system in the society dictates the direction of science because they control the needed funding that allows science to be done or made possible. No funding for science implies that there will be no science to be done.
(vii) All scientific findings that have very serious national, international, political, economic and social implications or consequences in life are sealed from the members of the public by the governments of the nations of the world where those findings are or were found.
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