Alright, so I've given everyone a few days, gotten exactly zero answers, and will now simply post my approximation of the correct answers.
1. What is the purpose of science?
Ans: The purpose of science is very closely related to the toilet. 200 years ago, no one had one. Now, every single person in America has access to them.
That's it. That's the purpose of science. It's ultimate goal is to take the world around us, figure out how it works, and - more importantly - figure out how we might benefit from that understanding. More on this in a moment.
2. If one football team gets 1000 total yards and one gets zero, who wins?
Ans: Well, we don't exactly know. It's probably the team that gets 1000 yards. The reason we don't know is because winning isn't measured by yards. It's measured by points. Yards is just a nice way to guess. In this case, our guess is probably accurate, but it remains only a nice way to guess.
3. Why?
Ans: Here's where things get tricky. Why would it be the team that gets 1000 yards?
As far as I can tell, it's because that's what ALWAYS happens. If you flush a toilet in North America, it ALWAYS swirls counter-clockwise. If you clap your hands, you'll always hear a noise. If you eat food, you'll always be at least a little less hungry.
In every case, the act is not the same thing as what you are trying to make happen. Clapping your hands is not making a noise. Clapping your hands is doing something that WILL make a noise.
That's it. That's science. We are trying to guess VERY VERY VERY correctly. We are trying to be so right, that there's basically no way we can be wrong. In fact, maybe it's better to think of it that way, since that is how statistics people think about it....
We aren't trying to guess right. We're trying to guess NOT wrong. We're trying to be as least wrong as possible. We are doing everything in our power to cover our own asses. If someone thinks they have an answer, we do everything we can to prove that they are idiots.
THE END
So that's the answer. Now you know everything there is to know about science. Now comes the fun part. Let's use it.
So we know that yards in a game is a great way to guess who is going to win, because we can come up with questions that might make the people who make wrong guesses look like idiots.
Here's an example:
I guess that the team that gets zero yards will BEAT the team that gets 100,000 yards!
Clearly, this person is an idiot. So we know that measuring yards might be a good way to figure out who is not an idiot.
Now let's look at an example that can't make a person look like an idiot:
I guess that if I wish hard enough, my team will win!
Um... How do we prove, and I mean PROVE without a shadow of a doubt that this person is an idiot? We can't. If his team wins, he can say he wished hard enough. If his team loses, he can say he didn't wish hard enough. There's nothing to measure. There's no way to prove one way or the other.
So we know that wishing hard is bad science.
Now what if we look at something more current, especially here in sunny Kansas:
Evolution vs Creationism/"Intelligent design"
This should be fun. First, let's take Evolution:
I guess that, if you put a bunch of plants that sometimes bloom white and sometimes bloom purple near some bees that ONLY like to pollinate purple flowers, you'll end up with the same number of white and purple flowers!
Clearly, this person is a moron. Eventually, if the bees totally ignore the white flowers then we're going to be running out of white flowers. The plants that bloom purple more than white are going to get more attention paid to them. The plants that bloom white are going to be ignored, which means they aren't going to be having any baby plants that bloom white.
If you keep letting this happen, over and over and over again, then you'll probably end up with only purple flowers, or, at the very least, with more purple flowers than white flowers.
And so the idiot proves to be wrong, which means watching and counting traits (in this case colors) as they go from parent to child for years and years is a nice way to see what's going on. This time, it was a nice way to see what bees could do to different colored flowers.
That's basically what evolution is. Evolution guesses that animals and plants change, depending on how the world makes them change. If bees like purple flowers and bees are how flowers make babies, then there are going to be purple flowers. If animals are trying to eat deer, and the animals with the biggest claws eat deer the easiest and have the most babies, then there are going to be more animals with big claws.
As far as I can tell, Intelligent Design doesn't have a problem with anything I've said. The only question it asks is, "OK, so taking all of that into account, how did we go from being tiny bugs to smart, big people?"
To which I say: "GREAT QUESTION! Let's hear your guess!"
We got smarter, bigger, faster, (and with better eyesight and depth perception), because a greater being made us that way.
.... Um. K. I'm sorry, I'm a little confused. I want to make you look like an idiot, like I made the guy who guessed wrong about the bees and the flowers, but I don't see how to do that.
Oh. Um. Ok. Try this: Our eyes couldn't be as complex as they are without a greater being's help.
Neat. I am down with that! But wait! There's still no actual way to measure that. It's not that I don't believe you, Mr. Intelligent design guy, but you've given me no way to show that you are right or wrong. Which means, unless you can think of something quick, I'm going to have to label you as bad science.
Wait! I got it! We can sweep the ENTIRE universe! If we find the being or beings that made us who we are, then I'm right. If we don't, then I'm wrong!
Hm... Interesting. Ok. I'm up for it. Just one thing... How do we do that? Oh yeah. We can't.
Therein lies the rub. Something may not be admitted as science until it can be proven wrong. Intelligent Design cannot be proven wrong. Evolution can be (it just wasn't).
I realize that I'm taking a long time to get through this, so let's wrap it up by asking one last question.
Why this crazy, fanatical need to be able to prove something wrong?
Ans: Because if we can't prove it wrong, then we can't use it. Does God make the toilet flush, or does gravity? God may or may not, there is no way to measure it. But it is very easy to show whether gravity does or does not.
Which means we can use it.
And that is the purpose of science.
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4 comments:
The real crux of evolution isn't the relative success/failure of one species over another (i.e. more purple flowers than white.) It's the ability of those species to genetically change sufficiently enough from their ancestors to be considered a new species. (i.e. white flower becoming bigger/more fragrant/more purple in order to attract the bees.
In addition, evolution hasn't been disproven, but it hasn't been proven either. It's a theory and makes likes of scientific sense and has tons of circumstantial evidence in its favor, but we don't have the kind of time line of observation to even begin to observe these changes. So it will remain a theory for now.
Also, it normally takes someone besides the science to use the knowledge in some beneficial way. In the physical realm, its the engineer. Science is only about discovery. The rest is somebody else's job.
I don't disagree with you, as far as you take it. But I do think the statement is a little misleading.
Firstly, a change different enough to be considered a new species is entirely a human concept/classification. What is meant by it? That two "species" can no longer breed together? Or that two "species" simply stop looking a lot like one another? Or something else entirely?
Second, in the hypothesis, white flowers wouldn't eventually become purple flowers. Instead, white flowers would cease to exist or at least become rare, and purple flowers would take their place. This assumes, of course, that both exist currently.
As far as I am concerned, everything beyond that is simply a matter of time, as small differences slowly seem to reproduce themselves out of necessity (or, conversely, phase out out of necessity).
However, these are only side discussions. The main discussion isn't evolution. It's evolution as it relates to science. As far as I am concerned, there are only about a handful of scientific facts and virtually all of them have been proven through either chemistry or physics.
These facts include gravity, mass, acceleration, the composition of matter, atomic force, and various derivations of those things.
Everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING ELSE, is a theory. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people didn't feel comfortable in label gravity as still a theory, since is fails to explain the micro-universe.
I'm happy to lump evolution in that category, simply because so much evidence supports it, and because it is an excellent (perhaps not absolutely perfect) predictor.
Furthermore, I'm guess most evolution researchers would have no problem calling evolution a theory, simply because still more needs to be researched on the subject. The issue is that they go up in arms when it is put on equal footing with intelligent design, because that is NOT a scientific theory.
It may be a theory, but it is a completely untestable one, which means it is not a scientific theory.
Lastly, I agree with the last point. Engineers, doctors, zoologists, and other do the actual application of science. However, I don't think that in any way detracts from my claim that the purpose of science is to figure out the world and then figure out how to benefit from that understanding.
Some people like to make a distinction between "pure" science, which has no obvious application yet, and the science that does have an obvious and immediate application. I hate to hear that distinction, because the ultimate goal, in an over-all geological-time sense is for everything we learn to benefit us in some way.
Thus the purpose of science itself remains the same; the purpose of the researchers, on the other hand, may be very different.
all's I can say is that is a really big post. It is Thursday night of Homecoming week and this tired teacher was checking in on Nate's bloggings to see if there was anything exciting. And while this looks exciting, it also looks like it will take way too much energy to read.
But that's probably about as much as I spent commenting . . .
There is definitely some distinction between same species / sub-species / and different species, I just don't know what it is because I'm not a biologist. I really do thing changes within a species are the stickier point here. The relatively failure/success of one species over another is just one half of the mechanism as we understand it. Sure different species go extinct, but new species are also born and they have to come from somewhere. White flower could become purple flowers, birds could grow longer beaks, mice could gain the ability to eat a poisonous plant, monkeys could get bigger and bigger brains. Animals could get bigger/smaller/faster/slower/learn to fly/forget to fly/develop gills/develop lungs. Thats the other half of the theory of evolution.
Uber-points on 'gravity as a theory' thing. Though if we're getting right down to it, we don't actually have any facts because we still got to relate the strong and weak nuclear forces with the electromagnetic force, and then figure out how gravity goes with that. Lump that all together in the "theory of everything" and then we've got the makings of some facts. Wow, our scientific process is pretty impressive when you consider we don't actually know what we're talking about.
You're probably right with respect to “pure” science. The point of everything is to better our world, splitting it up between who does the discovery and who does the application is just semantics.
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