What is science to me? By Eli Horrowitz

“Science”?
After taking twelve-plus years of science classes and spending a good chunk of time investigating the philosophy of science, the one thing I can confidently say about the subject as a whole is that I’m bad at it.  As much as the word is used to indicate a body of knowledge or a governing organization of sorts, science is at its heart a performance – and one that makes use of a wide variety of skills.  Pertaining as it does to the physical world, scientific investigation requires a certain level of dexterity and patience.  But since science is knowledge-oriented, it also calls for a measure of ingenuity and more than a little detachment.  An excellent scientist will, therefore, be a hard thing to find.

But science progresses despite this – could science not be so difficult after all? I doubt it – as in every other field, the history of science is littered with mistakes, overconfidence, and even outright dishonesty.  Scientists, after all, are only as human as the rest of us.  In fact, there are many cases in which scientists – that is, paid practitioners of science – are more human (in the pejorative sense) than the general population.  Experiments require money and money, even money provided with the best of intentions, comes with strings.  Take this into account and the above list of characteristics grows to include “brave”: it’s never an easy thing to work at a job that could well inspire your benefactor to stop sending you checks.

Luckily, scientists don’t have to go it alone.  For starters, there’s a scientific community, a group of roughly like-minded individuals aiming at the same goals.  Where one of these individuals lacks practical imagination, for example, another can step forward to provide it.  I imagine, then, that the best scientists aren’t necessarily the best scientists – a brilliant researcher or two can’t progress anywhere near as far as five or ten less talented but more cooperative ones.  I hope that most scientists operate in this spirit of cooperation, but the odds of that aren’t good – again, scientists are only human.

However the details work themselves out, it’s certain that science is a messier endeavor than one would guess by the stereotyped image of dispassionate scholars in white lab coats peering at beakers.  Although the process clearly works in at least the broadest of senses – you’re reading this on a computer, aren’t you? – the day-to-day workings of this thing called “science” remain utterly mysterious to me.  As for the scientists themselves, it would be very surprising indeed if they had the time or energy to worry about PR.  These facts combine to pose an interesting problem for the various scientific fields: to what extent does the public need to understand “science” – and who should be in charge of teaching us?