unspeakablehorror | Misconceptions About Science (Reply)

Some different misconceptions about science:

* 'I believe in science'

What people seem to usually mean by this is that they've adopted portions of highly publicized scientific consensus. Which is perfectly reasonable, but doesn't show any particular devotion to science, which is a process, not a particular set of conclusions someone might derive from that process and which could potentially change those conclusions with improved measurement tools or more rigorous testing. Science is not a system of particular beliefs.

* 'I'm like Galileo...'.

This is the equivalent of prefacing one's sentence with 'unpopular opinion but...' and I suspect the two have similar ratios for which they are actually true for vs the number of times they are said, a ratio that I highly suspect hovers near zero.

* Science perpetuates some specific value system, often 'Western' values (whatever that is supposed to mean).

Science is a process designed to facilitate the acquisition of repeatably testable knowledge. This means intrinsically it has nothing to say about values, about what should be. It is only about trying to discover what is. That people who hold those values may try to use science to validate and uphold those values is unsurprising, but does not mean that science itself is any more or less associated with such values.

* Science and engineering are closely related.

Science is about a type of knowledge, and engineering about a process of reliably creating something. People have been engineers for a very, very long time. They've engineered clothing, paint, baskets, food, boats, weapons, buildings, and more. To engineer is to create, to build. Science is merely to know. Science can enrich engineering, but is not a prerequisite of it. Humans build things--it's just how we are. Engineering is a process for building things better and more reliably, and can function even in the absence of scientific knowledge. They both share a goal of repeatable results, but that is where their similarities end. Engineering has come to be used to refer to the process of building particular things that commonly require a science background, but there is nothing about the process of building a computer or a spaceship or a skyscraper that makes these so fundamentally different than the process of cooking or crafting or producing art. These are all the act of creation, as opposed to science, which is a process of knowing that may or may not be applicable to the process of creation.

*Science is a 'Western' discovery.

Science, like engineering, has been with us for eons. Cultures across the world had their own astronomical knowledge. Astronomy, which has many repeated events, allows people to record and test theories about observations. People have devised bits and pieces of this process, or used the whole process for certain specialized areas of knowledge across time and across cultures.

* Science is 'real'.

Science produces models that agree with our observations and can make testable and repeatable assertions about those observations. But two very different models can make the same testable and repeatable observations. Countless astronomers across time and cultures have looked at the sky and saw the same moon and the same stars, recorded where and when they would be seen, but drew different pictures in the sky with those stars, and told different stories about them. And they still do.

* Science can tell us about everything that is.

Well, no. It can really only tell us about what is testable and repeatable. History, for example, is an important field of knowledge that is not fully accessible to the process of science, as it includes information about specific people and events that do not repeat. It is true that the generalities of history repeat, but history is not confined to general statements like 'all people eat food to survive' or 'all people sleep' or 'people engage in wars', but rather what specific people did these things at what specific times and in what specific ways.