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Showing posts from May, 2008

What is science?

What is science? One definition, and this comes from webster's, is: 3 a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method I have had this discussion many times with many men of faith, and many men not of faith. In most, I find an underlying opinion, backed up by the above definition, regarding the nature of science. That opinion is that science is the pursuit of truth. Its goal is to determine the underlying truth of the universe. I disagree. Science does not care about truth. Nowhere in the scientific method does truth rear its ugly head. What you have is observation and theory. In other words, look at the data, then make something up to explain it, preferably something that explains yet-to-be-measured data. Then measure that data and, if it matches what the theory explained, you've got a good theory. Science tells us when something will hit the ground if we drop

The beginning

I figured for the first post, I might as well start at the beginning. In case anyone ever reads this, I tend to ramble. This is kind of just a place for me to add a small, and I do mean small, degree of coherence to my thoughts. If it helps or entertains you, by all means, feel free to read on. Comments are always welcome. So what was the beginning? I would say it is arrogant to think that we can know. We can believe. We can model. But know? We show such arrogance. The typical Christian knows that God created the universe. They typical Scientist knows that the universe was "created" by the Big Bang. These are both smart people. It is easy to look across that fence and say, you are a fool. Have you not seen? Have you not read? What are the "facts" that cause this? The homogeneous universe of constant mass and increasing radius accounting for the radial velocity of extragalactic nebula. This was the beginning. It was a scientific theory presented by