I was thinking today (believe it or not). I was thinking about what my children might learn at school, and what I think they will need. While there are certain basic facts they will need, I think that overall it is an approach to knowledge that is needed. Rather than just knowing stuff, they need to know how to find stuff out, how to synthesise and understand it, and translate it into useful action.
They need science, or at least the scientific method (ahhhhh, now he comes to the point).
It seems that science is thought of by most people … well, not at all, actually … but when it is, it’s something that scientists do. In laboratories. With Bunsen burners and machines that go bing. What I want to do is demonstrate that it’s not that at all, that science is – or should be – ordinary everyday and anyone.
How can that be? We don’t all have Bunsen burners and machines that go bing. As I said: that’s not all that science is; that’s just the trappings of a particular bit of “hard scientific investigation” … or a school chemistry lab about to explode as some jackass throws a large lump of phosphorus onto the Bunsen …
I’ll illustrate – as is my wont – with a concrete analogy: I will describe the process I went through to fix our screen door.
My daughter had been riding her tricycle full-tilt into the sliding screen door to our deck, and one day we found it wouldn’t latch shut. I approached it as an application of the scientific method similar to the way we apply science in the practice of medicine. We gather some information (nothing’s obviously broken, the latching mechanism still moves as it
should, the door’s not off its track etc); we develop some hypotheses (either there’s a problem with the latch or with the bit on the frame that it should latch into, or the two bits aren’t apposing so that it can latch); we test those hypotheses (I took the bit off the frame and placed it on the latch part and tried latching it); and either prove or disprove – or in medicine perhaps rather include/exclude – them (it latched perfectly when not on the frame, so the problem was simply that of apposition); and finally in the application of that scientific method we devise a plan of action based on our results (I shimmed the bit on the frame by about 1/2mm) … and ideally we heal the patient (I fixed the door).
Someone who knows all about screen doors might well have been able to skip that process, and instead go on pattern-recognition, but that will only be accurate and helpful with excellent and specific knowledge and experience; without that knowledge or experience, I could have fumbled around and tried things at random (probably trying the same things – or variations – multiple times) possibly for a long time, or I could have done what I did: apply the scientific method to a problem, in a methodical fashion, and arrive (in this case quickly) at a solution.
That’s really all that science is: a method, and approach to the world and gaining information about it – and an approach that can be applied to real-world everyday situations with positive results … In terms of real-world everyday outcomes. It’s not just laboratories and universities and such. It’s not just observatories and Mars probes – though those are all way cool. It’s not even just the knowledge behind things like the iPhone on which I’m frantically typing this before our planning day starts. It’s simply a way to look at things such that we minimise our mistakes and errors, and come to the most accurate conclusions we can -instead of jumping to conclusions, missing the point, and reinforcing our own biases.
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