What Is Science?

So what exactly is science? Science is a way of poking the universe to make her give up her secrets.

For thousands of years people like you and me never knew the secret method of how to find out how the cosmos works, and so we couldn`t grow enough food, we couldn`t heal diseases, we couldn`t fly. We simply didn`t have the key to unlock the hidden treasure chest where the secrets of knowledge are found. We were ignorant and powerless.

And so we made up stories, lots of myths - and we believed in magic and spells and things like that. But of course these didn`t work and so we starved, we died of diseases - and we never flew.

We wanted to understand Nature and we wanted to control Nature - that was our dream, and that was why we believed in magic. But then, over the past few hundred years, we ever so gradually started to realize that there was a key to open the treasure chest of knowledge. We began to realize there was a way of poking Mother Nature so that she revealed her secrets to us - and we could, gradually, bit by bit, begin to control her. We now call that key, that way of poking Nature, the Scientific Method.

Science unlocks the secrets of the universe it reveals the mysteries of life.

.. It gives understanding it gives power.

Revolution

Basically, what this means is that we actually came to realize that knowledge is out there in the physical world. And rather than just guessing about it, making up stories about it and thinking things inside our heads about it, we could actually do something to uncover that knowledge.

We realized that if we carefully push and pull things, then by vigilantly noticing what happens we can begin to understand why it happens. And then, once we have made our guess at this we can test the idea somewhere else, so that we gradually piece the bits of the jigsaw of knowledge together. These activities we call experiments.

Over the years we have got better and better at doing this. We realized that we must only change one thing at a time and keep everything else the same. Our poking became more and more precise our key became a better and better fit. Nature`s treasure chest of secrets was opening.

Sometimes all this poking and prodding was very cruel. Mother Nature needed to be tortured to give up some of her secrets. Early on, those who wanted to understand the body would often dissect an animal while it was alive (without anesthetic!) so that they could see various organs like the heart actually work. At other times human bodies were stolen from graveyards to extract information from them by cutting them open and trying to work out how they worked. There were even grave robbers who made a living by stealing fresh corpses the night after the funeral and then selling them to scientists. Many of the adventures into uncovering Nature`s hidden information were held up because of a lack of equipment like telescopes and microscopes. But gradually, like a snowball rolling down hill, the explorers got more and more information from the world around us.

And so the revolution happened. We unearthed undiscovered laws and hidden principles - and worked out how to use them. We learnt to make carriages that move by themselves, planes that fly in the air, drugs that heal diseases, ships that could explore the bottom of the ocean, ways of talking to people on the other side of the world. We even went to the moon - and we have sent robot spaceships far, far beyond that. Perhaps most exciting, we have learnt how to actually look back in time and see events with our own eyes that happened thousands and thousands of years ago.

Remember the old fairy tales and myths with flying carpets, and wizards that could make explosions and magic potions to heal the sick. Our science is far better than that old magic and myth. To people only a few generations ago our science would be magic! And our "magic" is deeper, darker, brighter and more powerful than they could ever possibly imagine: we now know how to destroy our whole planet. And we now know how to save it too.

More than all this, our getting and using such knowledge are happening faster and faster. The snowball is accelerating. At the moment our total scientific knowledge is doubling every few years - and even more incredibly, the rate at which this is happening is doubling within a decade.

When we look back we see a revolution - and as we look forward . . . well, it is beyond anyone`s guess what we will uncover and what we will be able to do. The sky is nowhere near the limit. Nowhere near! This is utterly incredible.

But it raises a very personal question for you.

That`s right, a question for you.

Do you want to be part of this revolution?

Or, are you happy to be left behind?