The Nature of Science Essay Example for Free

The Nature of Science Essay Science plays an important role in development of mankind, its cultural and technological progress. Science helps humanity to understand natural phenomena and biological changes, evolutionary processes and shifts. Science can be defined as a particular way of knowledge and perception of the world and human beings based on historical information, hypotheses and experiments. Biology and Earth Sciences allows researchers to understand the evolution of species, explain natural phenomena and predict possible changes in the Universe. In fact, the revolutionary changes are invariably prompted by contradictions which occur when the previous concepts are applied to particular phenomena, and it is in the attempts to remove these contradictions that the changes are made. Science can be seen as the criterion of truth. Science is logic of discovery as well as of confirmation. Seeking to reconstruct what happened in the past, Biology and Earth Sciences must and do take as data only presently available written reports, and the presently surviving physical remnants of antiquity; and part of the interest of the research lies in its relevance to present and future situations somehow related to those of the past (Gierer 2000). Science is not a self-contained or self-sustaining activity. The most important it is conducted only in a community that has reached a certain level of intellectual development, which involves and implies social organization, culture, art, and religion, as well as philosophy. Biology and Earth Sciences are closely connected with and depend upon historical progress and cultural development of society which determine that main trends and direction in experiments and research. For instance, during the Middle Ages, Biology and Earth Sciences were influenced by inquisition and dominance of theological doctrines while at the end of 17th-18th century these sciences flourished because of new economic conditions and separation of church and the state. These examples show that Biology and Earth Sciences are part of a culture and cannot exist apart from it. For a long time, people supposed that Earth was flat and the stars related directly to the earth. When humans mastered the cosmos (1961), it has opened a new era in scientific discoveries and the evolution of knowledge. A link between culture, society and biology is evident in current analysis of social settings and impact of biological perquisites on humans: â€Å"One way of asserting the relevance of â€Å"biology for understanding human social behavior is to propose that our understanding of human activities can be greatly enhanced by specific consideration of humans as evolved species shaped by processes of natural selection† (Freese et al 233). In Earth Sciences, scientists can achieve control in the laboratory where results are reproducible. In both Biology and Earth Sciences, the course of science may solve the puzzles researchers have encountered in the application of their theories, anomalies and contradictions arise. For instance, â€Å"serious scientific debates about the neo-Darwinist synthesis as the overarching explanation of the origins of our species are, in the larger scheme of things, disagreements over details† (Freese et al 234). Today, Earth scientists argue about the impact of global warming on population and climate change. These research fields are determined by cultural conditions and historical importance for the mankind. In many cases, changes in philosophical and cultural paradigms paralyze the advance of knowledge producing a crisis which is only removed when eventually a revolution occurs in the thinking and practice of scientists with the introduction of a new conceptual scheme (Gierer 2000). In sum, the nature if science is determined by historical, cultural and philosophical paradigms and the discoveries of the scientists made during a particular period of time. Accepting these restraints on his freedom, the scientist secures to himself the protection given by the community of others who accept the same canons of science and scientific knowledge. References Gierer, A. (2000). On Modern Science, Human Cognition and Cultural Diversity.   Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. Retrieved 20 March 2007 www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P137.pdf Freese, J., Li, Jui-Chung Allen, Wade, L.D. (2003). The Potential Relevances of Biology to Social Inquiry. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, pp. 233-235.