Hey Ladies and Gents
I have been reading this forum, for a year now, so I thought it’s about time to ask a couple of questions.
As we know, we are living in scienefic age - it crops up everywhere from Physiology to every day life.
I would like to ask you two questions:-
1 – Define the word science to you?
2 – Why is it important to learn Science?
Thanks,
Lou x
It is not important to learn science.
1 a systematic and empirical description and explanation of our perception
2 it’s not, it’s merely important that some people studie it
Science is the Cause and Effect based rational to explain observable phenomenon.
Just like philosophy, science is a search for truth. If you are interested in truth then you should be aware of the abilities and limitations of science to reveal it.
I don’t think we learn science, it’s more like science learns us because we all are very inquisitive in nature and want to know the how and why in everything especially as children. So science creates an interest in us. The difference lies in some not being as inquisitive as others who would like to dig deeper and go and become SCIENTISTS. I also believe that no matter what, all of us are scientists at heart in some subject or another.
Do you not mean natural philosophers?
take the observable bit out and that might be someway towards a desription of physical science (a very small part of natural science as a whole)…
it is an intersting thing how much (esp. by philsophers) physical science (esp. particla physics) is taken to be the science par excellence despite it having quite a idiosyncratic set of practices when looking at science as a whole.
for instance, a great deal of science is a case of narratives or histories rather than the subsumption of event sunder laws…
the idea of observable phenomena is very tricky. so many things are scientific fact but we only “observe” them in a very much periphery sense of the word…
by using tools and or infering relationships which we justify with other theories, themselves justifed via tools and machines and theories and inferences etc… assumed relationships…
that is, observed in the basic “i see it” sense isnt what is going on in a bulk of our current science… it is very much a mediated observation… we see something in space that we dont expect and we don’t start getting all epistemilogical and wondering about its features or infering things from it… rather the first thing done is to check the thousands of lines of computer code that is rendering our observation… things like that…
Latour’s “science in aciton” is buetiful little readable look at that feature of science… how controversies are settled and become fact in the real life of scientists doing science, rather than philosophers wondering about “reality” and “nature” and such…
its much more to do with what chips are available and who’s building what where and for how much, and who you cited correctly in your latest paper than people generaly think…
Science is the quest for the physical truth about everything. It is the how. Philosophy is the why.
It’s not important that you study it if you’re not interested in, well, the how.
But it’s a shame not to, as you limit your scope of reasoning and frame of reference. If something is there to be learned, learn it! You’ll be a wiser person in the long run. Otherwise you might as well sit in front of the TV and watch re-runs of Melrose Place all day.
Hi friends,
My first post on this forum. I am a native french speaker, so I just hope you will not find my “english” prose too painful! 
1 – Define the word science to you?
The word “science” refers to a theoretical concept. Do not lose your time defining it. Why?.. Because, you will find as many definitions of science as there are philosophers or scientists. It is an bottomless black hole. Start from the thing in itself (e.g. a man trying to understand why the earth shakes, etc.), not the idea of the thing.
2 – Why is it important to learn Science?
Again, IMHO, you start from the wrong view point.
You do not have to “learn science”: you cannot learn “science” per se. What you can do, though, it is simply to try to behave or to act accordingly to the principle of rationality. From there, you will gradually build new knowledge structures to problems and issues that matters to you.
Also, a personal note of warning.
Do not think that science is only practiced by the TV image of men wearing a white coat in a big laboratory: science is not restricted to so-called official scientists. I will give you an exemple: Inuits, in the Ungava Bay, have a much deeper knowledge of the oceanography of the Arctic ocean and the behavior of seals in the real world than most of the wild life biologists working in their clean labs in Montreal or New-York.
By the way, even monkeys, trees and flowers develop knowledge structures. They simply HAVE to.
Cheers!
Elvis