Thread: Science?

Certainly science is not truth just merely a process of understanding things. It can also be influenced by fads and politics. Stuff that was "true" hundreds of years ago is not "true" anymore. For some, science is a sort of religion.

Science, is NOT religious at all, sorry beast, but that's ridiculous. Religion is a belief system that deals with how one should live their life, treat others, and almost always involves the belief in a supernatural being that somehow created everything. I wouldn't go as far to say science is the opposite of religion, but you certainly couldn't call science a religion.

What science truly is, is a means of gathering knowledge using the scientific method; i.e. asking questions about how/why things work, making theories about how/why they work and then performing experiments that either prove or disprove your theory. And nothing in science is considered proven until it has been tested as true thousands to maybe even millions of times.

One of my physics lab TAs said something that I hadn't thought about before: "Science is not an exact science". Meaning that science is not perfect, but it does however pursue perfection and understanding which means we're constantly finding out new and better ways of finding something we want to know about. And often we'll discover what we once thought was true was flat out wrong or too generalized for what we know now, and the beauty is that science has no real 'opinion' associated with it; only fact supported by evidence in experiments.

Granted this can be somewhat corrupted, but science strictly in its purpose of trying to understand how our universe works is beautiful. There are branches of science, but unlike different religions, these branches are all interconnected not only in how they interact with each other, but their common purpose of discovery.

If extraterrestrial life existed, their science may have a different name and have different means of finding and understanding how something happens, but the core idea is the same: it's a method of questioning, finding, understanding.


regarding your question "is science 'the truth'", itano, I give you this other quote by a guy named Randall Munroe(xkcd):

"you don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right."

The reason there are dividing words such as theory and law is to separate them based on their difference (obviously xD), which is: a theory is the accepted or commonly used understanding and a law is a fact. Plenty of laws made 100 years ago were based on comparatively primitive understandings of nature, however some were scientific marvels. Like religion, science is able to change with the people who participate in its dealings though the face of religion often changes to accommodate its genre of human, science usually remains static in the way of major variations.

That is not to say that science doesn't advance, which we all know it does. It's more like the application and use of science continues in the same fashion.

:P

Originally Posted by Dark.

Science, is NOT religious at all, sorry beast, but that's ridiculous. Religion is a belief system that deals with how one should live their life, treat others, and almost always involves the belief in a supernatural being that somehow created everything. I wouldn't go as far to say science is the opposite of religion, but you certainly couldn't call science a religion.

Sorry Dark but beast is absolutely correct, there are those who treat science as a religion. They lose sight of science being no more then our currant understanding of nature and something continually changing and cling to their currant beliefs as absolute truth. If you want to drive one of these people mad all you have to do is tell them that there is no conflict with religion because religion deals in "truth" and science deals in mans currant and very flawed understanding of "fact" and since truth is unvaried and facts change all the time the one has no effect on the other. It's almost amusing watching their mind blow, but kind of sad too.

To bad so many people lose sight of this:

Originally Posted by Dark.

"you don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right."

The only problem is that no matter how right you may think you are using science, tomorrow you may find out you weren't as close as you thought you were.


Put simply truth is truth and it doesn't change. How well we understand it and what we know about it does... constantly. Science is one way to try and learn about truth/right. Just don't mistake the journey for the destination.


Would "alien" science be different? Probably. The truth wouldn't change though so certain factors are likely to be similar or even identical. That is why we have parallel inventions happening all the time all over the world. Things are invented, forgotten, and invented again and not necessarily in the same places or by the same people.

To me people who try to explain the existence of God by science is the ultimate example of people using science as a religion. Is science were truth than truth would change constantly. Look at the Big Bang theory. The fact that there was a bang has been explained as an impossibility since there needs to be matter to vibrate to produce sound. The universe was a vacuum. That was Kaku, a famous physicist, who discovered that.

Originally Posted by beast

To me people who try to explain the existence of God by science is the ultimate example of people using science as a religion. Look at the Big Bang theory. The fact that there was a bang has been explained as an impossibility since there needs to be matter to vibrate to produce sound. The universe was a vacuum. That was Kaku, a famous physicist, who discovered that.

i agree with beast there are so many things that god cant do and that science canmt do for one thing god isnt perfect for if he was we as a people made in his image would also be perfect besides if god made us who made god for one thing nothing can come from nothing

Grumble Grumble Grumble...

Now there is a difference between what 'Science' is, and what people think 'Science' is...

Basically the actually definition of 'Science' is that 'Science' is a philosophy, where you view the world using 'logic' and the 'Scientific Method' to make observations and draw conclusions. And conclusions can only be made on what can be consistently observed and measured. As an example, the 'Scientific Method' cannot comment on the concept of 'God' because...

1. How do you define 'God' in terms that can be observed, either directly, or indirectly?
2. How do you measure the effects of 'God' in a consistent and reliable fashion?
3. How do you test changes in the effects of 'God' under consistent labratory conditions?

Now many people confuse 'Science' with Religion, (or more specifically, as Anti-God) because 'Science' cannot prove (or disprove) the existence of 'God'. The Historical fact remains that many of the most famous Scientist, (e.g. Darwin, Einstein) were actually quite religious, as viewed Science as a method to understand the works of 'God', and thus become closer to 'God'

Originally Posted by beast

To me people who try to explain the existence of God by science is the ultimate example of people using science as a religion. Is science were truth than truth would change constantly. Look at the Big Bang theory. The fact that there was a bang has been explained as an impossibility since there needs to be matter to vibrate to produce sound. The universe was a vacuum. That was Kaku, a famous physicist, who discovered that.

Actually, the current hypothesis of the 'Big Bang' that is growing in popularity in the Scientific community, is that the event could be the effect of 'Branes' (think as multiple parallel dimensions) colliding and interacting with each other. This is side effect of the very exotic 'String Theory' model, and even if its elegant, it may in the long term be impossible to prove or disprove...