Science Is Not Just A Matter Of Opinion

The Trumps of this world, who now control all three branches of our government, act as if there are no scientific facts, just scientific opinions. And everyone is entitled to have his own opinion. Perhaps this should occasion no surprise. Science is a latecomer and stepchild in human intellectual history. Narrative myth was the first, and is still the predominant, way we make sense of our bewildering world. Humans are natural storytellers who create plausible and comforting explanations for things we don't understand. Scientific thinking is much less natural to us and use of the scientific method (systematic gathering, ordering, and analyzing of data to test theories of cause and effect) was discovered late in our intellectual history and has been pursued only sporadically and often not very well. The earliest medical science, about 3,500 years old, came from Egypt; the oldest astronomy is from the same period in Mesopotamia. Ancient Greece and Rome greatly expanded abstract mathematical techniques for modeling the concrete physical world and developed scientific theories that competed- usually unsuccessfully- against the older mythic narratives of divine interventions. The Islamic world systematized empirical science, introduced quantitative and experimental methods, and refined the rules of inductive and deductive thinking- all more than one thousand years ago. Persia, India, and China all also made independent contributions. Lagging far behind, Medieval Europe finally ...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news