Chapter 1: How Science Works

"Aristotle"; by Francesco Hayez. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and scientist. (384-322 BC)

In everyday life we encounter other systems of knowledge besides the scientific method. One ancient system is called appeal to authority, which means citing the opinion of an authoritative person or book rather than using evidence and logic to prove a point. This system was especially prevalent in the Middle Ages, when scholars believed that ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Arab civilizations represented a golden age of knowledge and that there had been little progress since then. Therefore, instead of trusting their own observations and ideas, scholars cited old authorities such as Aristotle and Plato. To preserve ancient bodies of knowledge, medieval officials attacked anyone who contradicted the old authorities. Appeal to authority is very different from citing a reference when you write a paper on some topic. A citation should not be used to claim your argument is correct because some "Great Person" agrees with you, but rather to let your reader check the evidence from original sources.

Bronze statue of Giordano Bruno. He was put to death because of his ideas that did not go with the appeal to authority that was accepted at the time.

Appeal to authority is anti-scientific because it is not based on prediction, creative experimentation, and observation. Galileo, the first person to observe the universe with a telescope, remarked that the humble reasoning of one person is worth more than the opinion of a thousand authorities. Historically, the system of appeal to authority has led to terrible repercussions for those who challenged the traditional wisdom. In ancient times, Socrates was put to death for encouraging his students to question traditional ideas. In the Middle Ages, the philosopher and mystic Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church for suggesting heretical ideas about the existence of other worlds and life-forms. Galileo was shown the instruments of torture by the Inquisition and sentenced to house arrest for presenting his evidence that planets move around the Sun. In each case, a pattern was repeated: authorities feared that the roots of their culture would be endangered if bold thinkers encouraged debate about new ideas.

West face of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. It is representative of the American judicial system in which the advocacy system is used everyday.

Still another system of determining truth dominates our modern legal and political system, and so influences much of our lives. This is the advocacy system, in which each participant or team advocates one position in an argument. You may have experienced this in a school debate class, where you were assigned to defend one position whether you personally supported it or not. It is the basis of our legal system. In court cases, the primary goal is not to present all the evidence, as in science, but to win the argument. The assumption is that the truth will emerge from this vigorous contest between the two sides. In practice, it can be a troubling system. For example, the side with the most money can frequently afford to develop the best case. In addition, evidence with a clear bearing on the case may be removed from consideration by the court for procedural reasons.

Relativism is the method that astrologers, psychics, or fortune tellers use to attempt to explain the universe. Unfortunatly, this is gaining ground in our society, even though these claims have no evidence behind their claims while evidence is what the scientific method revolves around.

There is an unfortunate idea gaining ground in our culture: the method of science is just one way among many for knowing the world. This is called "relativism," which holds that knowledge gained from science or a psychic or an astrologer or an old superstition is equally valid. We must acknowledge the limits of science. Not every phenomenon has a scientific explanation yet, and science alone is not sufficient to run human affairs — try for example to imagine systems of law or economics or medicine that had logic but no compassion. The scientific method is not perfect. Conservative scientists sometimes delay the acceptance of correct new hypotheses. Fraud exists, but it is rare because an important result will always be checked. Despite these flaws, knowledge in this century has progressed at a breathtaking rate. As a system for revealing the way nature works, science is without equal.