The natural sciences

To risk sounding like a smart aleck seven-year-old, technically speaking you can only prove things mathematically. If you need to know that one plus one equals two, don’t go into a chemistry lab. The natural sciences deal with objects and forces that can be observed and measured. Scientists weigh the data from their experiments and try to come up with a way of understanding the material world that makes sense of them. For example, if I travel around my local area and see nothing but brown cows, then I could try out the statement that “all cows are brown”. I couldn’t prove that all cows are brown. I could never rule out the existence of a different-coloured cow somewhere in the world. Scientific knowledge is always provisional.

                       

The success of science lies in the fact that, if you keep doing experiments, you usually get nearer to the truth. So after years of travelling and corresponding with farmers all over the world, I might revise my statement to say, “cows are brown, white, black, grey, beige, or a mixture of these colours.” I’d be a lot nearer to the truth, and in fact I’d be fairly surprised after a few decades of research and collaboration with others around the world to see any new colours coming up.

Science has enhanced our lives in incredible ways. For example, many of us would not be alive today without medical technology based on hundreds of years of scientific endeavour. It’s tempting to get carried away, valuing science above any other kind of knowledge, but there are other ways of knowing that are equally important in their own way. Art conveys ideas, experiences or emotions that provoke us to think or do something in response; history helps us to learn from the experiences of others; and the study of literature can give us an in-depth insight into other cultures and ways of thinking.

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