Science does get it wrong sometimes
You know, a friend asked me "Wouldn't you be devastated if we got all science wrong? They'd have to re-write every physics text book!"
Now, I'm not sure if they can re-write velocity and speed. I mean, it's not really theoretical. It's kind of giving a quantitative measure to something qualitative, but I presume their talking about more theoretical stuff like particle physics.
And would I be devastated? Well, maybe initially (I even doubt this). But I'd get over it. And you know what? I'd even be a bit excited. I mean, imagine all the new research we could do? All the interesting discoveries that we'd make? I mean, sure we make interesting discoveries now, but still. It's like a whole new world. Well, the same old world, but seeing it with new eyes.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about. I mean, from the whole neutrinos faster than the speed of light thing(which was an error in the measuring equipment, I think), people liked the idea of going to their science teachers and saying "Nuh, uh!"
What we'd so is pretty much well known (this'll sound like a joke at the end of this).
What I'm going to talk about is how science sometimes does get it wrong and what that means to me. Yes, science does get it wrong. Yes, but really, what it comes down to is, what is science?
Science is the collection of human knowledge. It's what we know, or at least think we know. And what we know changes, because we realized that what we knew, isn't what we know. Science is about change. It's how we change what we know. Without change, it's not science.
And if science changes, the thing that science changed from was wrong.
And even then, the science wasn't really science. I mean, by my definition Aristotle's whole element thing was science. And we wouldn't even consider that science anymore.
Even so, "science" gets it wrong. And you know what? I'm okay with that. Because that's what makes it great.
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