Abstract
Thales bridged the gap between natural philosophy and science because he began the search for proof. But Thaïes didn’t always find proof—and neither does science. Indeed, science is in large part the very search for proof. Albert Einstein, certainly one of our greatest contemporary scientists, was a man who had a wealth of scientific knowledge. When asked how long it would take to confirm his theory of relativity, he is reputed to have said that while no number of experiments could prove him right, one could prove him wrong. If science isn’t strictly the “knowledge of facts” or the “exact observation” of Nature that the dictionary makes it out to be, what is it?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References Notes
Funk and Wagnall’s Standard College Dictionary, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1963, p. 1203.
Manheim, Ralph, and John Willett, editors, Brecht: The Collected Plays, Vol. 5, Vintage Books, New York, 1972, p. 3.
Bronowski, Jacob, Science and Human Values, Perennial Library, New York, 1965, p. 62.
Ibid., p. 63.
Ibid., p. 71.
For an alternative view of the proper role of the scientist in governing society, see Joel Primack and Frank von Hippel, Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Political Arena, Basic Books, New York, 1974, 299 pp.
Bronowski, op. cit., p. 64.
Frazer, Sir James George, The Golden Bough, Macmillan, New York, 1972, pp. 824, 825.
Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1961.
Rose, H. J., A Handbook of Greek Mythology, Dutton, New York, 1959, p. 12.
Nagel, op. cit., p. 4.
Ibid., p. 9.
The “holists” believe that there are structures in nature that are fundamental characteristics of the whole and not merely “the sum of its parts,” as reductionists believe. One example, the “Gaia hypothesis” is explored in Chapter 7. Briefly, in the words of James E. Lovelock (author of Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979, p. 1), “the quest for Gaia is an attempt to find the largest living creature on Earth,” which the author believes could be all of life combined. In the philosophical literature, holism is also debated. For example, see Chapter 4 of Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature, A Necessary Unity, Dutton, New York, 1979;
Lewis J. Perelman, The Global Mind: Beyond the Limits to Growth, Mason Charter, New York, 1976, p. 41;
Arthur Koestler and J. R. Smythies, editors, Beyond Reductionism: New Perspectives in the Life Sciences, Beacon Press, Boston, 1969, 438 pp.;
and Ervin Laszlo, Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1972, 328 pp. For a highly mathematical treatment of the issue of “self-organization” in physics,
see G. Nicolis and I. Prigogine, Self-Organization Non-equilibrium Systems: From Dissipative Structures to Order through Fluctuations, Wiley, New York, 1977, 491 pp.
Culler, J., Structural Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1975, pp. 24–30.
For an interesting view of science and the scientific method, see M. Goldstein and I. F. Goldstein, How We Know: An Exploration of the Scientific Process, Plenum, New York, 1978, 357 pp.
Frisinger, H. H., The History of Meteorology: To 1800, Science History Publications, New York, 1977, p. 8.
Ibid., p. 16.
This passage is from Aristotle’s work “On Generation and Corruption.” We used Richard P. McKeon, editor, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1941, pp. 522–523.
This passage from Aristotle’s Meteorologica is found in Frisinger, op. cit., pp. 18–19.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1981 Stephen H. Schneider and Lynne Morton
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schneider, S.H., Morton, L. (1981). What is Science?. In: The Primordial Bond. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1057-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1057-0_6
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-1059-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-1057-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive