science paper one

There is something frightening to me about science, and I think it comes from the misfortunate reputation science has of being too difficult to understand. I enjoyed reading this article because it helped me reconstruct my paradigm of what science is.

For starters who does not like a good story, and like the author points out what makes a better story than science. At first, I felt hesitant. Apollo the Greek God being a scientific explanation? According to the author this “story” is scientific. What? To answer this question I had to break down the definition of science the author provides and Greek mythology. If science is simply a story that explains the natural world, and the Greeks just wanted to explain why the sun rose and set. I guess the observation would be the rising and setting of the sun, and the explanation would be a God pulling it across the sky. After I read that I felt like I could be a scientist; I like to tell stories.

Simplicity, one of the seven scientific storytelling rules Bickmore and Grandy listed. This one stuck out to me the most. How could one of the RULES of science be that it is simple? As I read on I discovered that what the authors truly mean is not that science it’s self is simple, but that science is searching for a simple answer. That means that everything around me has an explanation, and not just any explanation but an explanation that I can understand and further more one that I can discover. Initially all I could think was that Bickmore and Grandy put a lot of confidence in human intelligence by stating that nature is “simple” enough for us to understand. It was a good thing that I kept on reading because I don’t think that is what the authors were trying to say at all.

Science is simple not because it is easy. Aristotle’s common sense said that when he drop a pen it fell to the earth because it wanted to go down, and fire went up because it wanted to go up. I always feel a little guilty when I bash on ancient philosophers and scientist. So, I will use an example from my own life, and we can make Aristotle look good. Up until I was twelve years old my common sense told me that there were so many rocks in the world because rocks had babies… then I took a Jr. High geology class and learned that non-living things don’t have babies. When Bickmore and Grandy say one of the rules of science is Simplicity they don’t me I am being scientific when I start a blog on the internet about all of my personal scientific explanations. Instead I believe they mean to say that science is the search for simplicity, and personally I believe that is what makes science difficult.

I think science is difficult, but that is what I think draws me to it. Please know that when I say I think science is difficult I don’t mean it in a negative way. Lots of good things are difficult. Some mornings getting out of my bed and out into the cold morning air is difficult. Science is difficult because in order for me to understand nature I have to construct and then-more importantly- reconstruct my scientific theories or stories. For example the black box experiment we did in class. After every experiment I had to draw a new picture; I had to think of a new possibility; I had to reconstruct what I believed could explain the black box. The hardest step of science might not be to construct an theory, but to demolish an old theory in order to make room for a more accurate one. This semester I think I am off to a great start at becoming a scientist. I already have one of my theories demolished; science means calculations and charts, and I have constructed a new theory; science is a story that uses calculations and charts like novels use characters and story plots.

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