Which Statement Best Describes Science

Affiliate 1: THE NATURE OF Science

THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD VIEW

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

THE SouthCIENTIFIC ENTERPRISE

Chapter 1: THE NATURE OF SCIENCE

Over the grade of human being history, people have developed many interconnected and validated ideas about the concrete, biological, psychological, and social worlds. Those ideas have enabled successive generations to achieve an increasingly comprehensive and reliable understanding of the human species and its environs. The means used to develop these ideas are item means of observing, thinking, experimenting, and validating. These ways correspond a primal aspect of the nature of scientific discipline and reflect how science tends to differ from other modes of knowing.

It is the matrimony of science, mathematics, and technology that forms the scientific try and that makes it so successful. Although each of these human being enterprises has a character and history of its own, each is dependent on and reinforces the others. Appropriately, the starting time three chapters of recommendations draw portraits of science, mathematics, and engineering science that emphasize their roles in the scientific endeavor and reveal some of the similarities and connections among them.

This affiliate lays out recommendations for what knowledge of the manner science works is requisite for scientific literacy. The chapter focuses on three master subjects: the scientific world view, scientific methods of inquiry, and the nature of the scientific enterprise. Chapters 2 and 3 consider ways in which mathematics and technology differ from science in general. Chapters four through 9 present views of the world as depicted by current science; Chapter 10, Historical Perspectives, covers central episodes in the development of science; and Chapter eleven, Common Themes, pulls together ideas that cutting across all these views of the globe.

�

THE SCIENTIFIC WestwardORLD FiveIEW

Scientists share certain basic beliefs and attitudes nigh what they do and how they view their work. These have to do with the nature of the world and what can exist learned about it.

The World Is Understandable

Science presumes that the things and events in the universe occur in consequent patterns that are comprehensible through careful, systematic study. Scientists believe that through the use of the intellect, and with the aid of instruments that extend the senses, people can discover patterns in all of nature.

Science also assumes that the universe is, equally its name implies, a vast unmarried organisation in which the basic rules are everywhere the same. Knowledge gained from studying ane part of the universe is applicable to other parts. For instance, the same principles of motion and gravitation that explain the motility of falling objects on the surface of the earth likewise explain the motion of the moon and the planets. With some modifications over the years, the same principles of motion have practical to other forces—and to the motion of everything, from the smallest nuclear particles to the near massive stars, from sailboats to space vehicles, from bullets to light rays.

Scientific Ideas Are Subject area To Alter

Scientific discipline is a process for producing knowledge. The process depends both on making conscientious observations of phenomena and on inventing theories for making sense out of those observations. Change in knowledge is inevitable considering new observations may claiming prevailing theories. No matter how well one theory explains a set of observations, it is possible that another theory may fit only as well or meliorate, or may fit a yet wider range of observations. In science, the testing and improving and occasional discarding of theories, whether new or quondam, go on all the time. Scientists assume that even if at that place is no fashion to secure complete and absolute truth, increasingly accurate approximations can be made to account for the world and how it works.

Scientific Knowledge Is Durable

Although scientists reject the notion of attaining absolute truth and take some uncertainty as part of nature, about scientific knowledge is durable. The modification of ideas, rather than their outright rejection, is the norm in science, equally powerful constructs tend to survive and abound more than precise and to become widely accepted. For case, in formulating the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein did not discard the Newtonian laws of motion but rather showed them to be merely an approximation of limited application within a more general concept. (The National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses Newtonian mechanics, for instance, in calculating satellite trajectories.) Moreover, the growing ability of scientists to brand accurate predictions nearly natural phenomena provides convincing evidence that we actually are gaining in our understanding of how the world works. Continuity and stability are every bit characteristic of scientific discipline as modify is, and confidence is as prevalent as tentativeness.

Science Cannot Provide Complete Answers to All Questions

There are many matters that cannot usefully exist examined in a scientific way. There are, for case, beliefs that—past their very nature—cannot be proved or disproved (such as the existence of supernatural powers and beings, or the true purposes of life). In other cases, a scientific arroyo that may be valid is probable to be rejected as irrelevant past people who concord to sure beliefs (such as in miracles, fortune-telling, astrology, and superstition). Nor do scientists have the means to settle issues concerning good and evil, although they tin sometimes contribute to the word of such issues past identifying the likely consequences of detail actions, which may be helpful in weighing alternatives.

�

SouthwardCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

Fundamentally, the diverse scientific disciplines are alike in their reliance on evidence, the employ of hypothesis and theories, the kinds of logic used, and much more. Nevertheless, scientists differ profoundly from i another in what phenomena they investigate and in how they go about their work; in the reliance they place on historical information or on experimental findings and on qualitative or quantitative methods; in their recourse to cardinal principles; and in how much they draw on the findings of other sciences. Still, the exchange of techniques, information, and concepts goes on all the time among scientists, and there are mutual understandings among them about what constitutes an investigation that is scientifically valid.

Scientific inquiry is not hands described apart from the context of particular investigations. There simply is no fixed fix of steps that scientists always follow, no i path that leads them unerringly to scientific cognition. At that place are, however, certain features of science that give it a distinctive character as a fashion of inquiry. Although those features are especially feature of the work of professional scientists, everyone can exercise them in thinking scientifically about many matters of interest in everyday life.

Scientific discipline Demands Evidence

Sooner or later, the validity of scientific claims is settled by referring to observations of phenomena. Hence, scientists concentrate on getting accurate information. Such bear witness is obtained by observations and measurements taken in situations that range from natural settings (such equally a forest) to completely contrived ones (such as the laboratory). To make their observations, scientists use their own senses, instruments (such as microscopes) that enhance those senses, and instruments that tap characteristics quite different from what humans tin sense (such equally magnetic fields). Scientists observe passively (earthquakes, bird migrations), brand collections (rocks, shells), and actively probe the world (as past boring into the earth's crust or administering experimental medicines).

In some circumstances, scientists can control weather condition deliberately and precisely to obtain their prove. They may, for instance, control the temperature, change the concentration of chemicals, or choose which organisms mate with which others. Past varying just one condition at a time, they can hope to identify its exclusive effects on what happens, uncomplicated by changes in other conditions. Oft, however, control of conditions may be impractical (as in studying stars), or unethical (as in studying people), or likely to distort the natural phenomena (as in studying wild animals in captivity). In such cases, observations have to be made over a sufficiently wide range of naturally occurring conditions to infer what the influence of various factors might exist. Considering of this reliance on evidence, great value is placed on the development of better instruments and techniques of observation, and the findings of any one investigator or grouping are usually checked by others.

Science Is a Blend of Logic and Imagination

Although all sorts of imagination and thought may exist used in coming upward with hypotheses and theories, sooner or later on scientific arguments must accommodate to the principles of logical reasoning—that is, to testing the validity of arguments by applying certain criteria of inference, demonstration, and common sense. Scientists may frequently disagree about the value of a particular piece of evidence, or about the appropriateness of detail assumptions that are fabricated—and therefore disagree well-nigh what conclusions are justified. But they tend to concord about the principles of logical reasoning that connect evidence and assumptions with conclusions.

Scientists do not work just with data and well-adult theories. Often, they accept only tentative hypotheses about the manner things may be. Such hypotheses are widely used in science for choosing what data to pay attention to and what additional data to seek, and for guiding the interpretation of information. In fact, the process of formulating and testing hypotheses is one of the core activities of scientists. To be useful, a hypothesis should suggest what evidence would support it and what show would abnegate information technology. A hypothesis that cannot in principle be put to the test of bear witness may exist interesting, but it is not probable to exist scientifically useful.

The utilise of logic and the close test of evidence are necessary just non normally sufficient for the advancement of scientific discipline. Scientific concepts do not emerge automatically from data or from any amount of assay alone. Inventing hypotheses or theories to imagine how the world works and then figuring out how they can be put to the test of reality is as creative as writing poetry, composing music, or designing skyscrapers. Sometimes discoveries in scientific discipline are made unexpectedly, even by blow. But knowledge and artistic insight are ordinarily required to recognize the meaning of the unexpected. Aspects of information that accept been ignored by ane scientist may lead to new discoveries by another.

Scientific discipline Explains and Predicts

Scientists strive to make sense of observations of phenomena by constructing explanations for them that utilise, or are consistent with, currently accustomed scientific principles. Such explanations—theories—may be either sweeping or restricted, only they must be logically sound and incorporate a significant torso of scientifically valid observations. The brownie of scientific theories ofttimes comes from their ability to evidence relationships among phenomena that previously seemed unrelated. The theory of moving continents, for example, has grown in credibility every bit it has shown relationships among such diverse phenomena as earthquakes, volcanoes, the match between types of fossils on dissimilar continents, the shapes of continents, and the contours of the ocean floors.

The essence of science is validation by observation. Just it is not plenty for scientific theories to fit only the observations that are already known. Theories should also fit boosted observations that were not used in formulating the theories in the kickoff place; that is, theories should have predictive ability. Demonstrating the predictive power of a theory does not necessarily crave the prediction of events in the future. The predictions may be nearly evidence from the past that has not yet been found or studied. A theory about the origins of man beings, for case, tin be tested by new discoveries of human-like fossil remains. This arroyo is clearly necessary for reconstructing the events in the history of the globe or of the life forms on it. It is as well necessary for the report of processes that usually occur very slowly, such equally the building of mountains or the aging of stars. Stars, for example, evolve more slowly than nosotros tin usually observe. Theories of the evolution of stars, however, may predict unsuspected relationships between features of starlight that can and so be sought in existing collections of data nigh stars.

Scientists Try to Identify and Avert Bias

When faced with a merits that something is true, scientists reply by asking what evidence supports it. But scientific bear witness can be biased in how the data are interpreted, in the recording or reporting of the data, or even in the choice of what data to consider in the first place. Scientists' nationality, sex activity, indigenous origin, age, political convictions, and and then on may incline them to look for or emphasize ane or another kind of evidence or interpretation. For example, for many years the study of primates—by male person scientists—focused on the competitive social behavior of males. Not until female scientists entered the field was the importance of female person primates' community-edifice behavior recognized.

Bias attributable to the investigator, the sample, the method, or the instrument may not be completely avoidable in every case, but scientists desire to know the possible sources of bias and how bias is probable to influence prove. Scientists want, and are expected, to be as alert to possible bias in their ain work equally in that of other scientists, although such objectivity is not ever achieved. One safeguard against undetected bias in an area of written report is to have many different investigators or groups of investigators working in it.

Scientific discipline Is Not Authoritarian

It is appropriate in science, as elsewhere, to plow to knowledgeable sources of information and opinion, usually people who specialize in relevant disciplines. But esteemed authorities have been wrong many times in the history of science. In the long run, no scientist, however famous or highly placed, is empowered to decide for other scientists what is true, for none are believed by other scientists to have special access to the truth. There are no preestablished conclusions that scientists must reach on the basis of their investigations.

In the brusque run, new ideas that do non mesh well with mainstream ideas may come across vigorous criticism, and scientists investigating such ideas may have difficulty obtaining support for their research. Indeed, challenges to new ideas are the legitimate business of science in building valid knowledge. Even the nearly prestigious scientists take occasionally refused to have new theories despite in that location beingness enough accumulated evidence to convince others. In the long run, however, theories are judged by their results: When someone comes upwardly with a new or improved version that explains more phenomena or answers more important questions than the previous version, the new i eventually takes its place.

�

THE SouthwardCIENTIFIC ENTERPRISE

Science as an enterprise has individual, social, and institutional dimensions. Scientific activity is one of the principal features of the contemporary world and, perhaps more than whatever other, distinguishes our times from earlier centuries.

Scientific discipline Is a Complex Social Action

Scientific work involves many individuals doing many different kinds of work and goes on to some caste in all nations of the world. Men and women of all ethnic and national backgrounds participate in scientific discipline and its applications. These people—scientists and engineers, mathematicians, physicians, technicians, estimator programmers, librarians, and others—may focus on scientific knowledge either for its ain sake or for a particular applied purpose, and they may be concerned with data gathering, theory building, instrument edifice, or communicating.

Every bit a social activity, science inevitably reflects social values and viewpoints. The history of economical theory, for case, has paralleled the development of ideas of social justice—at i fourth dimension, economists considered the optimum wage for workers to be no more than than what would just barely allow the workers to survive. Before the twentieth century, and well into it, women and people of color were essentially excluded from most of science by restrictions on their teaching and employment opportunities; the remarkable few who overcame those obstacles were fifty-fifty and so probable to have their work belittled past the scientific discipline establishment.

The management of scientific research is affected by informal influences within the culture of science itself, such as prevailing stance on what questions are most interesting or what methods of investigation are nigh probable to be fruitful. Elaborate processes involving scientists themselves have been developed to determine which research proposals receive funding, and committees of scientists regularly review progress in various disciplines to recommend general priorities for funding.

Science goes on in many different settings. Scientists are employed by universities, hospitals, business and industry, government, independent research organizations, and scientific associations. They may work solitary, in small groups, or as members of large enquiry teams. Their places of work include classrooms, offices, laboratories, and natural field settings from space to the bottom of the body of water.

Because of the social nature of science, the dissemination of scientific information is crucial to its progress. Some scientists present their findings and theories in papers that are delivered at meetings or published in scientific journals. Those papers enable scientists to inform others about their work, to betrayal their ideas to criticism by other scientists, and, of course, to stay beside of scientific developments around the world. The advancement of information science (knowledge of the nature of information and its manipulation) and the evolution of data technologies (peculiarly computer systems) touch on all sciences. Those technologies speed up data collection, compilation, and assay; make new kinds of analysis applied; and shorten the time between discovery and application.

Science Is Organized Into Content Disciplines and Is Conducted in Various Institutions

Organizationally, science tin be thought of every bit the collection of all of the different scientific fields, or content disciplines. From anthropology through zoology, in that location are dozens of such disciplines. They differ from one another in many means, including history, phenomena studied, techniques and language used, and kinds of outcomes desired. With respect to purpose and philosophy, notwithstanding, all are equally scientific and together make upward the same scientific endeavor. The advantage of having disciplines is that they provide a conceptual construction for organizing research and enquiry findings. The disadvantage is that their divisions do non necessarily friction match the manner the world works, and they tin make communication hard. In any instance, scientific disciplines do non accept fixed borders. Physics shades into chemistry, astronomy, and geology, as does chemistry into biology and psychology, and and then on. New scientific disciplines (astrophysics and sociobiology, for instance) are continually being formed at the boundaries of others. Some disciplines abound and break into subdisciplines, which then become disciplines in their ain right.

Universities, industry, and government are also part of the construction of the scientific endeavor. University research usually emphasizes knowledge for its own sake, although much of information technology is also directed toward practical problems. Universities, of form, are also particularly committed to educating successive generations of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Industries and businesses usually emphasize inquiry directed to practical ends, merely many also sponsor inquiry that has no immediately obvious applications, partly on the premise that it will be applied fruitfully in the long run. The federal regime funds much of the inquiry in universities and in industry but also supports and conducts inquiry in its many national laboratories and research centers. Private foundations, public-interest groups, and state governments also support research.

Funding agencies influence the direction of science by virtue of the decisions they brand on which inquiry to support. Other deliberate controls on science result from federal (and sometimes local) government regulations on research practices that are deemed to be dangerous and on the treatment of the human and animal subjects used in experiments.

At that place Are Generally Accustomed Ethical Principles in the Conduct of Science

Most scientists behave themselves according to the upstanding norms of science. The strongly held traditions of accurate recordkeeping, openness, and replication, buttressed by the critical review of one's work by peers, serve to keep the vast bulk of scientists well inside the bounds of ethical professional beliefs. Sometimes, however, the pressure to get credit for being the start to publish an idea or observation leads some scientists to withhold information or even to falsify their findings. Such a violation of the very nature of scientific discipline impedes science. When discovered, information technology is strongly condemned by the scientific community and the agencies that fund inquiry.

Another domain of scientific ethics relates to possible harm that could effect from scientific experiments. 1 attribute is the treatment of live experimental subjects. Modern scientific ethics require that due regard must exist given to the health, condolement, and well-being of brute subjects. Moreover, research involving homo subjects may be conducted simply with the informed consent of the subjects, even if this constraint limits some kinds of potentially important research or influences the results. Informed consent entails full disclosure of the risks and intended benefits of the research and the right to reject to participate. In improver, scientists must not knowingly bailiwick coworkers, students, the neighborhood, or the community to health or property risks without their cognition and consent.

The ideals of scientific discipline also relates to the possible harmful furnishings of applying the results of research. The long-term furnishings of science may be unpredictable, but some thought of what applications are expected from scientific piece of work can be ascertained by knowing who is interested in funding it. If, for case, the Department of Defense offers contracts for working on a line of theoretical mathematics, mathematicians may infer that it has application to new military machine engineering and therefore would likely be subject to secrecy measures. Armed forces or industrial secrecy is acceptable to some scientists but not to others. Whether a scientist chooses to work on research of peachy potential chance to humanity, such every bit nuclear weapons or germ warfare, is considered by many scientists to exist a matter of personal ideals, not one of professional ethics.

Scientists Participate in Public Affairs Both as Specialists and as Citizens

Scientists tin bring data, insights, and belittling skills to bear upon matters of public business organization. Often they can help the public and its representatives to understand the likely causes of events (such as natural and technological disasters) and to estimate the possible effects of projected policies (such every bit ecological effects of various farming methods). Often they tin can bear witness to what is not possible. In playing this advisory office, scientists are expected to be especially careful in trying to distinguish fact from estimation, and research findings from speculation and opinion; that is, they are expected to make full use of the principles of scientific inquiry.

Even then, scientists can seldom bring definitive answers to matters of public debate. Some issues are too complex to fit inside the current scope of science, or there may be piddling reliable information available, or the values involved may lie outside of science. Moreover, although there may be at whatever one time a broad consensus on the bulk of scientific knowledge, the understanding does not extend to all scientific issues, let alone to all scientific discipline-related social issues. And of course, on bug outside of their expertise, the opinions of scientists should enjoy no special brownie.

In their work, scientists become to great lengths to avert bias—their own as well as that of others. Just in matters of public interest, scientists, like other people, can exist expected to be biased where their own personal, corporate, institutional, or customs interests are at pale. For example, because of their delivery to science, many scientists may understandably be less than objective in their behavior on how science is to be funded in comparison to other social needs.

�