Science is a Method, Not a Test Tube.

Unless you lived under a rock, you probably know that all of us do not have some super-awesome fundamental connection to the goings-on and nature of the Universe. We are a part of the universe, and ever since science became a thing, we have been trying to figure it out. It's like waking up out of a coma, and asking, "What in the hell happened?"

Fortunately, we do have some methods by which we can determine fact from fiction, and make sure that the ideas which pop up in our head somehow add up to the outside word. It all stems from properly basic ideas of logic. And apple cannot be a non-apple. If all apples are red, and we see an apple, it's deductively certain (but not inductively) that the apple we see is red.

Physics is probably the purest, if not most basic form of science in all of the sciences. It wants to explain not only why things happen in a certain way, but how. It's not enough to say the apple falls to the ground from the tree because of gravity. We want to know how the apple can accelerate constantly due to gravity until it is acted upon by the ground and decelerated to rest with respect to the ground. Science, like Richard Feynman, (who was scientist) is the Great Explainer of reality.

All of this sounds a little esoteric, and believe me when I say that I am at fault if your eyes have glazed over at this point. It happens. In fact, I'd argue the absolute hardest thing a human can do is to map the ideas in one's head to the reality of the things outside of one's head. There's so many things that can go wrong in between the two, so many processes that give false positives. We are conscious meat encased in calcified tissue. We have biases and inherent pattern recognizing mechanisms and there's so much that we need to do in order to rigorously divest ourselves from these pitfalls to safely deliver us to the shores of what is in fact true.

So, without any further obfuscation. How in the name of the Gods does this happen?

You are in a room. You are in this room alone and you see on the other side of the room a pot full of flowers.

Credit: Albert Marquet
Wikimedia Commons

 As far as you can tell, you can see it clearly. You get closer and you can feel the petals of the flowers. You can smell the scent. As far as you are capable of being certain, you are certain that this pot of flowers is in front of you.

But what if it isn't, you think to yourself. What if this pot of flowers is nothing more than a complex delusion orchestrated by some outside force hitherto unseen? You couldn't possibly know for sure. You study the pot of flowers for two weeks, every day going up to the plant and feeling, smelling, visually observing it. You write down what you observe every day without fail. After the two week period is up, you look at your data and compare each day's observations to the others.

With the exception of slight, but otherwise unremarkable changes (the flower smelled slightly different on the first Tuesday than the other days) You notice that your daily data seems to be roughly consistent. In fact, you would say it is about 95% consistent. What have you determined?

You could say that the observations are in fact reflective of the reality of the situation. You are observing a pot of flowers. But you pause for a moment. It is certainly possible that while this may be the case (and all evidence for it up to this point seems to confirm it), but the specter of the "outside obfuscator" still haunts you. Maybe its the case that the obfuscating force is simply capable of ensuring that the observations are consistent. If that's not the case, the reliability of senses to this point seem to be confirmed by the slight unremarkable changes in observation, and the more or less similar observations.

Your confidence is higher than it was before. However, despite it all, it's still possible for there to be some trick being played, no matter how much more confidence you might have. How else might I determine if what I observe is actually what I observe? The answer is third party verification.

You're no longer the only person in the box. Two other people have come forward to help you in your observations. They do the exact same observations in the exact same way as you (as far as they are able to adequately replicate.) As a result, they too get small deviations in their observations, but nothing earth shattering. They match with yours, for the most part. As a result, the consensus among the observer ( after poring over the data) is that their observations confirmed yours. At least 95 percent of the time.

What is this little narrative all about? At its fundamental core, past all the popsci articles and controversies, beakers, test tubes and lab coats is science. Science isn't a discipline. It's a method that seem to be the single most consistently reliable way to determine what is true, and determine what is false.

Above all else, that method of science can be aptly summed up like this:

What do we think we know, and how do we think we know it? How do we answer this question in such a way that we believe as many verifiably true things as possible, and disbelieve as many false things as possible?

Consider that ultimate question next time you read an article on a miracle cure for cancer, or someone denouncing vaccines as poison.

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