INTRODUCTION
Science can be defined as the study or knowledge of the physical and natural world
based on observation and experimentation. There are different sciences that can be
mainly put into two categories. They are natural sciences and social sciences. Natural
sciences include chemistry,
physics,
zoology, biology, etc. Social sciences include sociology,
political science, demography, etc. All sciences provide a scientific
understanding of the natural or the social world.
A. METHOD
OF SCIENCE
The method of science (scientific method) is the
process by which science is carried out. As in other areas of
inquiry, science (through the scientific method) can build on previous
knowledge and develop a more sophisticated understanding of its topics of study
over time.
Method of science involves the following
i.
Asking a question,
ii.
Doing background research
iii.
Construct a hypothesis
iv.
Test the hypothesis with an experience
v.
Procedure working?
vi.
Analysis data and drawing of conclusion
The outline process of science method can be
illustrated in the form of flow chart as shown below:
Elements of the scientific method
There are different ways of outlining the basic
method used for scientific inquiry. The scientific community
and philosophers of
science generally agree on the following classification of method
components. These methodological elements and organization of procedures tend
to be more characteristic of natural sciences than social sciences. Nonetheless, the cycle of
formulating hypotheses, testing and analyzing the results, and formulating new
hypotheses, will resemble the cycle described below.
Four essential elements of the scientific method
are iterations,[57][58] recursions, inter leavings, or orderings of
the following:
- Characterizations (observations,[60] definitions, and measurements of the subject of inquiry)
- Hypotheses[61][62] (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements of the subject)
- Predictions (reasoning including logical deduction from the hypothesis or theory)
- Experiments
B.
AIMS OF THE SCIENCE
Science as a collective institution aims to produce more and more accurate natural explanations of
how the natural world works, what its components are, and how the world got to
be the way it is now.
C.
THE FUNCTION OF SCIENCE
One of the most
important things science gave us was security – we figured out how to take care
of our physiological needs, as well as our physical needs. Having something to
eat the next day, a place to be safe and treatment for a sickness became normal
aspects of our lives, and with these basic needs fulfilled, we were free to
concentrate on learning even more. We made the most out of science by initially
trying to understand how things worked, and then making them work to our
advantage; the result is that, besides offering us what we needed, science
allowed us to create what we wanted.
Even more important
than security is self-awareness. Science allowed us to understand how things
work, but also how to make things happen. Social sciences made us understand
that, if we want to survive, we need to work together in an organized matter.
This is what led to the apparition of the economic system, the political
systems and the education system.
Science is introduced
in our lives at an early stage, through our education. We learn a basic set of
skills that we expand with specific knowledge in a certain direction at a later
stage, but we never really appreciate just how important science is in all this
equation.
D.
Compare Science and COMMON SENSE
Common sense and
science are two words that are often confused when it comes to their meanings
when strictly speaking, there is a difference between the two words. Common
sense is our usual understanding of practical issues. The word common sense is
used in the sense of ‘natural instinct.’ On the other hand, science is the
study or
knowledge of the physical and natural world based on observation
and experimentation. The word science is used in the sense of a ‘kind of
knowledge.’ Common sense is our knowledge of day to day life. Science goes a
step beyond and provides scientific explanations for realities in life and
those that we take for granted.
Common sense includes our knowledge
of day to day realities. It is how a lay person comprehends the world
around him. Common sense provides practical solutions to daily matters. As
human beings, through the process of development, we all acquire common sense.
It is this knowledge that allows us to behave properly in the society.
Simply common sense includes things that we take for granted. While Science can
be defined as the study or
knowledge of the physical and natural world based on observation and
experimentation.
Differences
between science and commonsense
1. The goals of science and
commonsense are different. Commonsense is mainly concerned with immediate action
in context; science is mainly concerned with achieving some understanding which
- to some extent - is independent of persons and context, and in this interest
may eschew the need for guiding immediate action.
2. Science has developed an extensive
tool-kit of theoretical models, investigated in great detail, so that its
imaginative resources are very finely structured and elaborated. While Commonsense
relies more on the broad brush of basic dimensions of how things can possibly
be. Its rationality boils down to what makes sense.
3. Science relies more on extensive
collaborative and competitive work towards unarguable agreement. Commonsense
is certainly collaborative (even collusive), but when differences arise,
agreements to differ are common. In the commonsense world, persons think
as they do; in the scientific world, knowledge is what it currently is.
Similarities
Between Science And Commonsense
1. Both science and commonsense rely
on fundamentally concrete modes of thought.
2. Reasoning is done with imagined
entities and events. That the imagined entities of science are different from
those of commonsense is not now the point; the point is that they are used in
thinking in fundamentally the same kind of way. Explanations, both in science
and in commonsense accounts of physical reality, are stories about what
entities in a world would have done in order to bring about what is to be explained.
3. Both science and commonsense stop
explaining at the level of what is (for the time being) made to seem obvious.
Explaining stops when we understand events as working out according to the
currently imagined and understood nature of how things are.
4. Both science and commonsense share,
or at least so I suppose, the same common ontology of space, time, object, and
action (that is, the same basic dimensions of thought). But they use them
differently, and attribute entities and events differently to them.
REFERENCES
Rules
for the study of natural philosophy", Newton transl 1999,
pp. 794–6, after Book 3, The System of the World.
From
the Oxford English Dictionary definition for "scientific".
Peirce
(1908), "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God", Hibbert
Journal v. 7, pp. 90–112.
Gauch,
Hugh G. (2003). Scientific Method
in Practice (Reprint ed.). Cambridge University
Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780521017084. Retrieved 2015-01-26.
No comments:
Post a Comment