What is Science?
...tcher throws his pitch. These are all examples of superstition that can be seen in everyday life. Another area that combines both myth and superstition is religion. Without getting into a philosophical debate we can examine this area. There is no scientific “fact” that shows that any religion is correct. Religion is based purely on faith. The faith that someone believes what cannot be proved, and in many instances this is the foundation for the divinity of religion. This brings us to Descartes second point about defining science. He universally “resolved to trust only that which is clearly and distinctly seen to be beyond any doubt” . He went so far as to mistrust the “obviousness of his own senses”. In this way he defined something to be scientific if it could be “proven”. If a subject was something that could not be empirically tested, than he did not trust it. This seems to clearly define the line between something that could be considered “science” and something that is non-science. Another question that one might examine to understand the meaning of science more fully is: “What characteristics distinguish science from other ways of knowing?” In fact, most of what can be said to be science is something that can be directly observed. However, our own senses come into question when defining observation. As Kant said, “to the extent that knowledge depends on the structure of the mind and not on the world, knowledge would have no connection to the world and is not even true representation, just a solipsistic or intersubjective fantasy” . He even went farther to say that even processes within the mind could be delineated. Sense perception he defined as a posteriori and a priori, and these were things that dealt directly with our observations of the outside world. Examples of these thoughts within the mind would be the observation of the color of a leaf on a tree, or the height of a skyscraper. However, the third area was ideas. He claimed that ideas were “independent of sense perception” . This would mean that ideas had no bearing and no foundation from the outside world and were simply elements of our mind. An example of an idea would be that you love someone. This would definitely be a way of knowing that was not scientific through observation. When examining any subject it is useful to ask what kind of questions this subject can answer and what kind of questions can it not answer. This is true for science, math, physics, philosophy, psychology, etc. Probably that person to discuss this subject the most was Karl Poppper. He was very interested in drawing the line between what could and could not be considered a scientific question and sometimes answers. He expounded upon the idea of falsification. He claims that for a question to be considered scientific, and therefore able to be answered by science, it must be able to be falsified. An example of an unfalsifiable, or unscientific hypotheses would be: “Some superstitions actually do work”. This theory could never be completely disregarded even if an observation contradicted it. On the other hand, an example of a hypothesis that could be converted into a scientific question would be: “Water freezes in normal conditions at fifty degrees Fahrenheit”. This is obviously false, and once we prove that it is false it can be completely disregarded. This gives us some specific guidelines to go by when trying to decide whether a question can be answered scientifically or not. Karl Popper’s discussion on falsification gives us a good point to address the next question which is: “Why can explanations (and theories) never be completely proven or disproved?” In the above paragraph we saw how some hypothesis and therefore questions can be unscientific in nature. This would make them unable to be disproved considering that their falsification does not completely discredit the entire explanation that might be put forth. On the other hand, when dealing with scientific questions, “it only takes one observation to prove a theory false” . Conversely, even when dealing with scientific theories and expiations Popper said that we would never be able to prove them true. He states that “science can never prove a theory to be true because new observations can always through doubts on a theory” . In this way we see that sometimes it is impossible to completely prove...