What is science?
[Last Update: 29th January 2018]
Especially in the current situation it is very important to understand, what science really is, so that one can objectively make one own judgment. Since the beginning of the last century, science has successively supplanted many mystical and superstitious thinking of people. This was of course important and necessary for the mankind to be free of illusions and charlatans. Unfortunately, the charlatans have also adapted to the new circumstances.
Knowledge was difficult to access for the most until the end of the last century. It was the age of the internet that enabled almost total freedom of information gathering, especially cost-effective or free. This, of course, was partly inappropriate for certain devilish charlatans0. Why inappropriate? As long as one keeps the people blind, stupid and naive, the more manipulatable and controllable are they. Why was it only partially inappropriate for them, the devils? The new situation also enabled or opened new markets. They wanted to take benefit of the profit (profit = power), but they still wanted the people keeping blind and naive. How can one achieve this? Of course, by flooding people with information, diverting their interests to unimportant things, and bombarding them with problems1 of various kinds.
Knowledge is only a form of power, just as money is also too. Of course, other forms of power exist. If all different forms of power are concentrated at one point – this can be a single person or a small group, then it becomes very dangerous for the rest of the world. Think about why we have antitrust laws.
The German Term “Wissenschaft” (= science) is a concatenation of the two German words “Wissen” (= knowledge) and “erschaffen” (= to create) and it means to create (new) knowledge. This should be clear to everyone, but how can one create knowledge? Everyone who has studied in a university should know how to write a scientific paper. There are exact quality standards that must be met. Starting with the formatting of the text, the type of wording, sources, etc. The whole criteria are standardized in science. This means, if you satisfy the standards, then it is recognized as science. But this does not mean that the knowledge or model created in this way must be a comparison of the real world.
In science, there are mostly competing models that can even contradict one another (e.g. universe vs. multiverse [string theory]), and the models’ proponents, of course, believe in their version of the model until their model becomes empirical or otherwise refuted. The emergence of the universe with the big bang etc. is also described in Hinduism. Hinduism does not represent the theory of multiverses, which corresponds to reality.
Mathematics allows to create a large number of models, but in physics only a handful of them can be used. Because physics deals with the real world and the real world, as well as the universe is limited. Infinity is a mathematical construct, in physics it is meaningless.
When I mention the infinity in the context of the purification procedure, I’m trying to explain to you that this is apart of physics.
The theory postulated by Isaac Newton states that masses cause gravitation, but this model neglects that light2 can also be deflected by the curvature of space and time. The general theory of relativity or model postulated by Albert Einstein, in turn, explains the distraction of light, that is also of massless particles, which has been already experimentally confirmed. The theory of relativity also describes the singularity associated with the Big Bang (E=mc2, that mass and energy can be transformed into each other), as well as the expanding universe and beyond.
As I already said, these are all models of physics to describe our world, but they remain only models. A model cannot be verified but only falsified.
This last sentence3 is fundamentally important to be understood, so that one can imagine what science actually is and what science is not.
Footnote
0 charlatans → Note that there are not only devilish charlatans. Charlatans who acted independently of the evil groups have always existed and they still exist.
1 problems: familial, financial = For example, one have to work more for less money, so there is no time and patience for the family, etc. → a form of time withdrawal, etc.
Intelligent algorithms (AI → artificial intelligent) help to optimize the matter even better.
2 Light has the characteristics of particles and waves, see wave-particle duality
3 The verification procedure is totally different than of the falsifying procedure. When falsifying, one counterexample is enough, and the theory or the model is disproved, and thus also all the models which are based on the refuted model. To better understand this, see the video “Darwin’s Dilemma – The mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record“, with Google you can also find the video and can watch it. For the sake of completeness, I have to mention that the link between the evolutionary Big Bang (not to be confused with the Big Bang theory in physics) and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has been found. As I have noticed several times in other areas, this is the attempt after the slogan “What does not fit / suit, has to be make suitable” 😉.
Complementary Sources
- Darwin’s Dilemma – The mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record (DVD, Amazon.com)
- New Approach to Explaining Evolution’s Big Bang (Newspaper, The New York Times)