what do people mean when they say science is always changing, and what is the example of science changing?

353 views

?

In: 0

14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Science is not necessarily the explanation of everything it studies. Science builds models. We rigorously test these models and see where they break. We use these models to try to predict future outcomes. Sometimes, these models last a long time. We put men on the moon using Newton’s equations for gravity. They are very very accurate… On most scales that we deal with. The main problem was when Newton was around, we didn’t have the technology to probe anything other than the situations we deal with most of the time.

Now that we have better technology, we find out that when things start moving closer to the speed of light, or the density of an object approaches that of a black hole, the error in Newton’s model start to grow and grow until the predictions are meaningless. So we took this new information and made a new, better model (I say we, I think Einstein gets the majority of the credit). This new model is much better at predicting what happens in these situations. And the difference between the predictions of the new model and Newton’s model become negligible at normal scales.

But where are the limits of Einstein’s model? What happens when we get close or go beyond them? We don’t know because we can’t do that yet. We don’t have the technology. But for basically everything we use Einstein’s model for right now, it’s good enough that we don’t have to worry about what’s wrong with it. Just like Newton’s equations were good enough to get men on the moon even though they weren’t perfect either.

As for how it is always changing. I like to use the why question. We can chain explanations together. If something is what we call an emergency property, then there are some more fundamental causes that group together to produce the property. Example, why does water dissolve salt? Because both water and salt are polar molecules. But why are they polar, and why does that make a difference. We can answer these questions too, but eventually, we get to the most fundamental thing we know (or at least that we think we know). It explains everything downstream. But we can’t answer why it happens to be that way. Example: why does an electron have a negative charge? All we know right now is that it does. We don’t even know if there is a reason. Maybe someday, we’ll find an even more fundamental fact that will explain why the electron has a negative charge, but the why question never goes away. It only gets pushed one rung down the ladder.

You are viewing 1 out of 14 answers, click here to view all answers.