What Is Science Really About

So what is science? How does it relate to us in real life. I know we studied it at school, that it had something to do with detail and facts, and that it had to be clinical. It seems strange given my entire life is influenced by the established “science“ of the day, that I can't really give you or myself a clear understanding of what it is and how it works.

Shouldn’t we know so much more about it. ?

I’ve heard science described as “the peak expression of human effort”, and the institution that “makes understanding possible”. Which I can relate to. I have an image in my mind of a place where information is stored and we draw on it when we need to.

Since our journey into the conscious world some two million years ago, collectively humanity has been acquiring knowledge about the world we live in, ultimately about ourselves. Plato described human’s as “the proper subject of knowledge”, in his famous cave allegory.

So does that make Science the mechanism that has the potential to shed light on the human condition. Have we as a species, humanity, been working toward a greater understanding of ourselves.

Has science been the source of information that lifted us out of the darkness, of ignorance and mysticism, into a world of knowing, and does understanding go hand in hand with freedom. There seems to be a chain of events that begins with consciousness, which after thousands and thousands of years developed into science. The subsequent understanding lends itself to freedom. The unsaid words are freedom from our inability to understand ourselves and our behaivour.

One of my favorite authors, Jeremy Griffith, described science as “the liberator”, in his book "A Species in Denial". Going onto make just that point, that it was the collective effort of all humans, building knowledge through time, that has allowed us to understand so much of the world around us. When clearly there was a time that we lived in fear of the unknown.

The clinical element of science made it feel so “dry”, and un engaging. In 1991 The Australian newspaper published an article that described the issue like this, “For the past 300 years science has had been dominated by very mechanistic thinking ... Mechanistic thought has undoubtedly had a stifling effect on the human spirit”.

During a time when the world seems so much a mess, in any direction you want to look, shouldn’t science be inspiring with possibilities, finding solutions to our problems, not leaving us feeling sterile.

Which brings me to the next question, within the question, of what is science. When science is meant to be so clinical and objective how does it relate to the immeasurable.

You might be thinking what’s immeasurable ... how about love, emotion, or spirit. How do those things fit in, or where do those things fit in.? Well I know they don’t seem to fit into the concept of science. Traditionally those ingredients are in the custody of religion. The next article will have to be about how to reconcile those two institusions.

I hope there is some constructive food for thought there in my attempt to understand the question of “what is science”.