science must be understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of robots programed to collect pure information.
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Science can be viewed from various standpoints, not only from that of epistemology; for example, we can look at it as a biological or as a sociological phenomenon. As such it might be described as a tool, or an instrument, comparable perhaps to some of our industrial machinery. Science may be described as a means of production - as the last word in ‘roundabout production.
Science results from a profoundly social process. The common portrayal — that science emerges from a solitary isolated genius, always laboring alone, not owing anything to anyone — is simply wrong.
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We must avoid the caricature that science means formula or a lack of humanity in work. In fact, science is one of humanity’s most creative pursuits. I believe that applying it to entrepreneurship will unlock a vast storehouse of human potential.
My message is that science is a human activity, and the best way to understand it is to understand the individual human beings who practice it.
Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity.
All things considered, science is the best means of understanding almost everything around us. It works well on the human scale and stands as a stark counter-point to beliefs that by their very nature refute the notion of evidence. And I would be the last person to attack people encouraging the rest of us to use our ability to be rational, thereby defending the value and the necessity of science. But I will lift a querying hand when the notion of ‘science’ is held to be immutable, because ‘science’ as such does not exist. Science is a process to be sure, a way of thinking, but what science is above all is that which scientists do, and alas, scientists are people, too. As potentially fallible, irrational, biased, greedy, in short, as flawed, as the rest of us. So, by all means defend science as a process. But don’t confuse it with the very human endeavor of science as a profession. Because they’re not the same thing. And this is why when some guy in a white lab-coat says ‘you can trust me, I’m a scientist,’ best take it with a big bucket of salt, and then say ‘Fine, now show me the evidence and more to the point, show me how you got to it.
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View PlansScience is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility.
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.
Science is no inexorable march to truth, mediated by the collection of objective information and the destruction of ancient superstition. Scientists, as ordinary human beings, unconsciously reflect in their theories the social and political constraints of their times.
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage - at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.
Science is human behavior, and so is the opposition to science.
Science is simply the classification of the common knowledge of the common people. It is bringing together the things we all know and putting them together so we can use them. This is creation and finds its analogy in Nature, where the elements are combined in certain ways to give us fruits or flowers or grain.
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
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