RE: How science works
August 30, 2010 at 7:00 pm
(This post was last modified: August 30, 2010 at 7:01 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
(August 30, 2010 at 4:57 pm)Scarface Wrote: Can anyone explain, in their own words (no links), and as simply as possible, how the scientific process (method) works, including peer review. And if you can, explain the history of the scientific method.
My understanding (in very simplistic terms) is...
1. Things! --> 2. hypothosis about how things work --> 3. Tests!, if fail, goto 2. if Success, goto 4. --> 4. Peer Review!, Fail?/Success?, if fail, goto 2. if Success, goto 5. --> 5. Hypothosis is now a Theory!, if counterevidence is presented, goto 2.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
