Abstract
In this chapter we will try and answer the, at first, very innocent looking question, how does science actually work? In particular, how did we come up with the science that is “physics”? This will take us to the definition of the scientific method, that is the interplay of theory and experiment, which in cosmology, like all other areas of science, is far from trivial.
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Notes
- 1.
Some people, especially some social scientists, emphasise a social or personal element which is omitted in the “scientific method” they argue that dominant figures drive the research and can influence the tests and the questions asked. Also they can influence the interpretations and the so bias the answers and conclusions and thus what goes into the theories constructed around the laws. While this is undoubtedly true at times and for individuals or groups, the effect is temporary because of the way the scientific method works.
- 2.
Karl Popper (1902–1994), Austrian philosopher and psychologist, major contributions to the philosophy of science.
- 3.
Issac Newton (1642–1727), English physicist and mathematician, ground breaking work in many areas of of physics, one of the developers of calculus.
- 4.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955), German theoretical physicist, developed general relativity, the modern theory of gravity, and made massive contributions in other fields of physics.
- 5.
The arc second is an “old” unit to measure fractions of a degree. One degree is split into 60 arc minutes, and an arc minute is then divided further into 60 arc seconds, hence we have 3600 arc seconds in 1∘.
- 6.
Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922–1996), American physicist and philosopher of science.
- 7.
We will however see in Chap. 6, that the forces at play over large periods in the history of the universe, are the same to the ones governing the weather, with some simple extra ingredients.
- 8.
To simulate the evolution of a huge volume of the universe is only possibly by allowing the computer to evolve the governing equations using time-steps of the size of years. This makes it possible to simulate billions of years in the history of the universe in a couple of weeks of computer time. That the results nevertheless agree with the real universe, can be checked by using simple test cases against which the simulated results are compared.
- 9.
We can of course also compare the numerical results with other theoretical calculations, arrived at using pencil and paper. This will allow us to check the numerical procedures—we haven’t discussed the numerical and computational errors—and also check our pencil calculations and the approximations we made in them.
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Malik, K.A., Matravers, D.R. (2019). How Does Science Work?. In: How Cosmologists Explain the Universe to Friends and Family. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32734-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32734-7_2
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