Science is a verb

I love science. More to the point: I love the scientific method. I think this is an important point to make because most everybody loves science. Humans love figuring things out, knowing facts, and we all get excited by new discoveries, but it seems that not everyone loves the scientific method. Or maybe not everyone understands it. I’m not sure which it is, but I hope it is the latter because that is easy to address and is something I hope to tackle in some of my posts on this blog.
It seems that many people see science as a noun, something that incorporates facts and trivia, the ability to list off the obscure properties of some organism or chemical, but in truth science is a verb.
Science is an active process that uses controlled observation and experimentation to help us understand ourselves and the world we live in. It is so simple and effective, yet has only been in use as an institution for less than 6% of human history. It just goes to show how much faith we put in personal experience and anecdotes as methods to define what we view as ‘truth’. One of the many things science has shown us is that we are terribly subjective in interpreting reality when left to our own devices and senses. That’s where a lot of problems come in. I find it frustrating to watch people fall victim to this type of thinking and am constantly trying to keep myself from making the same logical fallacies in my own beliefs and decisions.
I hope that through writing this blog, that not only will I help explain some of the more basic false assumptions we make (ie personal memory is reliable), but that it will also enable me to examine and research beliefs that I hold about how the world works. I expect the posts will center around exciting new research, rants about quack medical ‘cures’, logical fallacies in the main stream media, rants about the lack of support for good science education in public school, the occasional plug for skeptical artists, and more rants about irrationality.
That being said, I feel I should end on a positive note. I think there is a lot of beauty in the world and that it is enhanced by our ability to understand it. The night sky is beautiful to behold, but for me, knowing that I am looking at millions of stars and solar systems, some maybe like our own, makes it even more amazing. And thanks to science I know that I am a part of it, that I am made from star stuff.

-Lauriel