1. The physical world is regular and predictable
2. What is science?
3. Why study science?
4. The scientific method (4 parts, with examples).
5. Pseudoscience

• We certainly should start a general science class by defining what science is, and what it is not.
• The physical world that we live in is regular and ordered. Most physical events are predictable and we learn them by experience.
• If we were dribbling a basketball and on one of the dribbles the ball bounced 3 stories high, we would be quite surprised. We would probably grab the ball and examine it, and then look hard at the surface from which it bounced to figure out how it happened.
• This is what is meant by the phrase that "the physical world is regular and predictable." The ball will not suddenly bounce 3 stories high, unless there is some good reason.
• I do not mean predetermined!

Science is the tool that we use to understand how the world works, and how we interact with it. It provides
1. Ideas and theories
2. A method for how to learn more, and how to answer questions
3. A model of the order of the universe, covering the scale from sub-nuclear to the vastness of the universe.

1. Your job may depend upon it, understanding what is going on may help you to do a better job, understanding new advances may help you make changes that improve your job.
2. New technologies drive economics, law, business, health, sports, philosophy,  etc. E.g. Clinton’s information age, make semiconductors in Asia, lose manufacturing jobs here. E.g. Last year Bush cancels federal funding for the internal combustion engine and instead will support funding for the fuel cell.

Science offers a way to answer questions and to guide research. This way is called the scientific method. It is composed of 4 parts:

1. Observation
2. Identifying patterns and regularities
3. Hypothesis and theory
4. Prediction and testing

1. Observation

• In order to learn more about the world that we live in we must observe what is there and what is going on.
• Believe it or not, but this is a rather new idea in the history of mankind and civilizations. We can actually mark the technological advances by the time period in which people started to think this way.
• The Greek philosophers argued that one couldn’t deduce the true nature of the universe by using the senses because the senses lie. Only pure reason can lead to true understanding. For instance, Plato thought that we were like people living in a cave and watching shadows on the wall. We could only perceive the shadows and not the light or the form that created them.
• In the middle ages, reason was replaced by a devout trust in authority (if you will) or in knowledge that was received by others, for instance the Greeks, or religious leaders. E.g. At Oxford a question arose concerning how many teeth a horse has. One person quoted Aristotle, and another quoted St Augustine. One monk said let's go outside and look in a horse’s mouth and see. He was physically attacked and thrown out of college.
• These early methods are not scientific because they were not based upon observation. They may be perfectly self-consistent and were done by very bright people, but they did not lead to advanced technology or knowledge of what we now consider to be science.
• I would like to distinguish between observation (observe nature without interaction, eg astronomers observing the stars) and experiment (manipulate some aspect of nature and observe its outcome, eg. A chemist who mixes materials together and sees what happens).

2. Identifying Patterns and Regularities

• When we observe that a particular phenomenon occurs over and over again we are starting to see how the universe works. For instance, every time we drop something, it falls.
• When making quantitative observations scientists often like to express the observations in a mathematical form. So for instance, instead of just saying objects fall, a scientist will want to know how fast it falls, or how long it takes to fall a certain distance. The data could be measured and put into the form of a table or a plot.
• Examination of the data or plot would lead the scientist to observe that the longer something falls the further it goes. In fact the scientist may observe that if the object falls for twice as long then it will travel 4 times as far. If it falls for 3 times as long then 9 times as far.
• The results can be summarized in sentence form, in equation form or in symbols.  However, not every observation needs to be expressed with mathematical data. For instance, if a field was being overtaken by the neighboring forest, the observation could go something like weeds come first, then bushes and scrub trees then pines, then hardwoods, etc.

3. Hypothesis and Testing

• Once we have identified and summarized the observation, we can form a hypothesis. This is an educated guess. It could simply be that when objects are dropped they fall, or they may be stated in the form of a mathematical equation. The form is irrelevant. When observing something for the first time a scientist may form several hypothesis at once and work out which one is the true one.
• A theory is a description of the world that covers a relatively large number of phenomena and has successfully described many observations and experiments.
• Eg: You see your girlfriend or boyfriend kissing someone down the block at a car. The hypothesis can be that they have a new lover, or something is in their eye, or…. The hypothesis does not have to be true. It is simply a working assumption. After investigating the situation in whichever way you do it best, you may come up with a theory: My girlfriend gets a lot of objects in her eyes, or guys are worthless and always cheat.  Do you see the difference between hypothesis and theory?

4. Prediction and Testing

• Every hypothesis and theory must be tested by prediction. Predict a result and test to see if it works. For instance, we hypothesize that all objects fall when dropped, then test it by dropping every sort of object. Each success makes the hypothesis more likely to be true. Such a test would fail once we tried to drop a helium-filled balloon. It would also fail if we did it in space.
• So the role of tests is not only to prove or disprove a theory, but also to constrain the range of things for which it is true. We would now say that any solid object dropped on earth would fall.
• If a theory has so much validity that it always seems true then we might elevate its status to a law of nature. So the generalized laws of nature that comes from dropping objects are now called "Newton’s laws of motion".
• We never stop testing!!!
• A subject that is not testable is not science.

• These four elements form a cycle that is never-ending.
  1. Observation
  2. Identifying patterns and regularities
  3. Hypothesis and theory
  4. Prediction and testing
• Some important points:
  1. We do not need to keep an open mind. We usually have some idea and work from this hypothesis. But we must believe our experiments.
  2. There is no right place to enter the cycle.
  3. Must be reproducible.
  4. The cycle is endless.
  5. The cycle is not rigid, bursts of intuition happen.

• The central way of knowing in science is based upon the fact that nature is reproducible. I.e., every idea in science can be tested by anyone at any time. If an idea cannot yield reproducible results, then it is not science.
• There are legitimate questions that science can never hope to answer. For instance, study the Mona Lisa. We can determine the age of the paint, the chemistry, maybe even some of Mona’s genetic attributes. But we can never say, with science, if it is a beautiful painting. Or what is the correct way to respond to seeing it.
• This means that science does not answer all questions. How the world works and how we can shape it, yes, but not questions like, what is the meaning of life? Is there a God? What career should I choose? Whom should I marry? These are not questions that can be solved by observation, hypothesis and testing. That is why we have religion, philosophy, and the arts.
• Pseudoscience: Creationisms, ESP, UFOs, astrology, crystal power, reincarnation, etc fail the tests that define science. There is no reproducible test that will convince people that something is right or wrong. This is called pseudoscience.