Essentially, science consists of the following three-part process: Think of every possible way the world could be. Label each way an “hypothesis.” Look at how the world actually is. Call what you see “data” (or “evidence”). Where possible, choose the hypothesis that provides the best fit to the data. The steps are not necessarily in chronological order; sometimes the data come first, sometimes it’s the hypotheses. This is basically what’s known as the hypothetico-deductive method, although I’m intentionally being more vague because I certainly don’t think this provides a final-answer definition of “science.” The reason why it’s hard to provide a cut-and-dried definition of “science” is that every one of these three steps is highly problematic in its own way. Prof Sean Carroll 3quarksdaily 5 July 2013
Posted on: Sat, 06 Jul 2013 03:37:28 +0000
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