Reading the article The Nature of Science and the Scientific Method, I enjoyed the reminder that we must remember that science is limited by factors such as the possibility that a scientific explanation is not absolute (thereby requiring that scientific experiments must be repeated to obtain greater probability that they are correct). While the scientific method helps achieve better understanding of what is probability correct or incorrect, it is always valuable to continue to question and think creatively, beyond what is already considered as “givens” in our knowledge base. As the article points out, the tools and naked eye prior to the 16 th century once made it seem “evident” that the sun revolved around the earth, but continuing to question led to more accurate discoveries. As the article indicates, while the steps of scientific method are useful, questioning itself is a scientific method of addressing many aspects of life in the hope of achieving a higher level of knowledge, even in determining such things as whether ones car is out of gas or rather, the battery is dead.
The Prions Molecule of the Month article invites inquiry that both involves the typical steps know to reflect the scientific method and a more broad type of inquiry into consequences and effects of the existence of prions. On one hand, the “steps” can be used to determine how prions misfold and influence other proteins to misfold, and how and why the prions operate and can be prevented from causing harm. In another sense, consideration of unintended consequences calls for a different type of inquiry, such as how prions can sometimes be useful even though they “cause a terrible disease.”
I like to think of the scientific method as both a way to prove and disprove hypothesis that I wonder about in my everyday life, but also in the broader sense that helps me make creative inquiries into what else may be true and how I can think out of the box to lead to new ways to look at things. After recently attending a talk at Wellesley about climate control, I listened to the speakers explain that “it is widely known by scientists” that climate control exists and is causing damage to our planet. These scientists have used the traditional, enumerated steps of the scientific method to prove their hypothesis. While this information is certainly valuable, and while I think we need to take climate control seriously, perhaps there are other ways we should be looking at the issues. For instance, what should we consider damage? Perhaps the species that are dying out as a result of such changes are making room for other species, and who is to say whether those changes are “better” or not? Perhaps they are undesirable changes based upon humans’ desires for how the world should be, but on the other hand it may be valuable to try to look at the issues in new ways- ways that do not always conform to what we take as given accuracies.