What good is science? What is the purpose of science? Why do we need it?
Most of you are probably thinking “well science helps us understand the world and how it works.” And of course you are correct. But how do we know that the science is correct?
Top scientists once believed that the world was flat, the sun revolved around the earth and that if you leave some grain in a sealed closet that mice would spontaneously appear through a process called Spontaneous Generation. All obviously wrong!
I will go into the process of how true science can prove how the world truly is in another article but here and now I want to proclaim that the USE of Science is to make predictions.
Consider for a moment Newtons Law. “Everybody in the universe attracts every other body with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.”
First of all please notice that it offers NOTHING about the WHY. Why does matter attract matter? No explanation has ever been proven. But with the above law we can accurately predict the mass and orbits and even the existence of planets* and put a man on the moon. Science calls Newton’s discovery a LAW because it works every time anywhere. Yes, OK, later it was discovered to break down in the quantum world but that is not my point. The point is that we can predict exactly what is needed to put a satellite weighing a given amount into an orbit at a set distance from the earth.
Next point: If your “Science” cannot accurately predict outcomes then your science is flawed! If for some reason you can’t accept this at least accept that it is useless!
Can you think of anything being touted as science or “proof” today that doesn’t seem to work out in the real world? Are we willing to examine our core beliefs about the world and see if we can make accurate predictions?
More to come…….
*Neptune was discovered by John Couch Adams in 1846. Adams was an English astronomer and mathematician who, at the age of 24, was the first person to predict the position of a planetary mass beyond Uranus.