Models Based on Evidence: Science Doesn’t Care What You Believe
I saw this funny coffee cup online — apparently, I told some people in my family so they gave it to me as a Father’s Day gift. Thanks for that.
However, when I shared my photo online — the responses weren’t all that great. Some people took this as an attack on religion. It wasn’t meant to be that. But I still like the cup. It’s basically saying that when it comes to science, it doesn’t matter what you believe. Beliefs are not part of the scientific process.
OK, then what is this whole “science thing” that everyone talks about? In short, science is the process of building models. These models could be physical (like a globe of the Earth) or they could be a conceptual idea. Models can be equations (like the work-energy principle) or they could even be a set of computer instructions to model the 3 body problem.
You can start building a scientific model from just an idea (scientists have to be creative sometimes) or you could use the results of an experiment. But no matter how you build the model, it has to somehow correspond to real life. There MUST be some bit of evidence that the model can predict or explain. Without that connection to the real world, the model might as well be a video game or fairy tale (or string theory). Ha. OK, that was mean.
