16 October 2008

The tricky question of "what is science?"

Linking here to a third-hand blog post about how scientists often can't define terms like "theory" and "law." No wonder the media gets them mixed up! Part of the problem though is that scientists don't study how they do science, they just do it. Studying how science is done would be part of epistemology (the study of how we know things), which is part of philosophy. It's also in the realm of science education - but unfortunately science educators also don't know how science works... *grumble* No wonder things like ID and the Moon Hoax have managed to make such inroads into our culture!

1 comment:

zandperl said...

If you know the definitions, you're not allowed to be a scientist! ;)