In the twenty-second chapter of The Science of Discworld II<\/i>, science is not what I thought it was. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Ah, I love having my beliefs or understanding challenged by this book. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily agree with everything Cohen and Stewart say\u00e2\u20ac\u201dparticularly some of the stuff about religion, as they tend to be a bit too general about it\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut this chapter helped me understand what exactly is<\/i> science. I think you can see even in the review for chapter twenty-one how I got close to what it is, but I still missed the mark. (Hehe.) That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably because of lies-to-children, and I think at this point, we can all agree that the education system in America is… not great. At the same time, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very important point the book makes in this chapter: science still involves people crafting stories for one another. Still! Those stories have a different context and aim, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re there, aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they?<\/p>\n
So, I read a lot of the examples in the last chapter as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153science\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because… well, they utilized scientific principles. That qualifies them, then, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Well, not really, and this chapter does an excellent job of addressing how much intent must go into the act of being a scientist and what counts as science. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think that negates my point that non-scientists were responsible for huge advances in scientific theory, but this helped me to understand the qualifications for science in a way that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really have when I was still in school.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I did<\/i> have to study the scientific method at length, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious if people elsewhere also had to do science fairs in in school. Our framework was a bit more rigorous and defined: We had to come up with a hypothesis. We had to do research on the topic. We had to come up with the parameters to test our hypothesis. Then we had to record and observe it before coming to our conclusions. This was a THING, and it was bigger in elementary and middle school than in high school, though some of those high school level science fairs were INTENSE. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recall the specifics of the many science projects I did\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m pretty sure one of them was about growing mold?\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut as far as I know, this is actually a fairly common practice in American schools. I literally see those tri-fold cardboard stands as science fair displays and nothing else. WHICH REMINDS ME! My sophomore year, I was carrying one of those horrid, awkward posterboard disasters when my bullies drove by\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit had just rained\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand deliberately got as close to the curb as possible, splashing me and my project with water and nearly ruining it. SO I HATE THOSE POSTERBOARD DISPLAYS ON SIGHT.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, that was the sort of understanding of science that I had growing up. You came up with hypotheses, and you tried to prove them right or wrong through testing. Obviously, kids aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly going to have access to the right facilities or tools or technology to conduct experiments that would hold up to rigorous testing. But I think that our teachers at least tried to get us thinking about what went into experiments like this and what it meant to try to learn more about the world. That theme is what spoke to me the loudest in this chapter. At the heart of science, at least according to Stewart and Cohen, is the notion of challenging authority, even if<\/i> that authority is the teacher you had or the paragon who came before you. That strive to learn more about the world, to craft ideas and theories that challenge our understanding of everything, is super appealing to me. I admit that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s partially due to the fact that I grew up in an oppressively religious household, in a nation that often values one set of religious beliefs above all others. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s specific to me, and as I mentioned before, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure I agree that nearly all religions criticize \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everything except<\/i> themselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But I know on a personal level, I want scientists to challenge the world. I want them to change it for the better. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surreal to be living in an age where anti-science sentiments have so much power<\/i>, that this narrative is coming back around again.<\/p>\n There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a line here about how we, as humans in the modern age, expect \u00e2\u20ac\u0153big changes during our lifetimes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But I wonder how Cohen and Stewart would feel about that sentiment now<\/i>. I still want big changes, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m distressed by those in power ignoring science and scientists. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m dancing around it, but the way we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going in terms of climate change? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s terrifying<\/i>. We have people who are willfully ignoring warnings from the scientific community because they want to make money now<\/i>. Obviously, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more complicated than that, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the major motivations, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so short-sighted and gross, you know? We truly have advanced as a culture in terms of communication and transportation\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat I absolutely agree with\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut what are we using it for? How can we expect progress in these areas when there are people determined to bring the world down with them?<\/p>\n SORRY, GOT DARK THERE FOR A SECOND. This stuff gets me HEATED.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/W-OuU-c6Ims<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the twenty-second chapter of The Science of Discworld II, science is not what I thought it was. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,248,552],"class_list":["post-4754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-science-of-discworld-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}