Bio 103, week 1

 This class will approach science as analytical historians. Today, more than ever, it is so important to look critically at the history of the Earth and to really evaluate what we have always thought to be true. Science is cumulative and we have to ensure that we are not using faulty theory to build our modern observations. 

On the other hand, I worry about never truly reaching a mastery of the basic concepts of Biology. If we don't allow anything to be accepted and agreed upon, we will obsess over language and semantics to the detriment of progress. I hope we learn to reach a happy medium in this philosophical Biology class so that we can use knowledge, observations, and convictions about Biology to interpret and adapt the way that we and others interact with the Earth. 

I like the idea that science is in many ways really just a story,everyones story. we all see the world from our own perspectives making it impossible for there to be anything conclusive about our observations in the sense that, I will always observe with my own eyes and how can someone else truly see what I see. There will always be truths in science and in life (science is life) but they will be the truths that we each have come to our own conclusions on never being able to become (T)ruths. Of course there are facts in science but those are because people stop asking questions and whoever has decided that their conclusion makes the most sense and enough people believe them bingo bango bongo you get yourself a $100 bio book.

With that said I really think this whole process is really beautiful although daunting that notion that we will forever be revising our "stories" I think its the reason we are all here in the first place...to ask questions and never completely settle for (T)ruths.

So far I have been really enjoying our class discussions as they have deconstructed many of my previous thoughts about science. For most of my life, I have had an immense fear of science, mostly because I was scared of being wrong. I felt that science was too rigid and didn't allow for mistakes. You had to be right and that was that.

Yet, this class has made me more confident in my sometimes silly and simple observations. My simple summary of observations could lead to something greater than I had originally envisioned. I appreciate that even the greatest scientists must go through the same "loopy" process that I do in order to obtain results. Most importantly, this "loopy process" removes the fear of making mistakes. I no longer fear making mistakes because I know it is integral part of the process; I need to make mistakes in order to modify and improve my summary. I know now that the goal is not be right, but instead to be less wrong.

I also found the discussion on Truth and science to be particularly interesting. This way of thinking seems more exciting than just simply believing what others before me had discovered. This mindset of not taking science as truth forces me to always be inquisitive and question what I have been taught or told. It forces me to search beyond texts and find the observations that led to those proposed thoughts. This method is asking me to constantly question, think, formulate, and reformulate ideas. I find this  method far more interesting and challenging then just taking everything I hear for face value. Most importantly, it allows me to contribute my ideas and thoughts to science, with the goal of crafting a better, "less wrong" idea.

 One thing that really struck me during our discussion last week was this notion of "truth." Truth is an abstract concept that we believe in and have convinced ourselves is real because we have a very human fear of the unknown. I like that we refer to scientific "truths" as little t, because the elusive big T will probably never be uncovered, no matter how much we as a society conflate little t and big T. Everything is true until it isn't. Like the example we used in class the other day, with the story of the Earth being flat vs. the story of the Earth being round. For a while, it was true that the Earth was flat. The only reason it's no longer true is because new observations became available with new technological advances, requiring a new summary of observations to explain that particular phenomenon. This new summary of observations led us to what we now regard as truth. We have dismissed the old summary in favor of the new one. However, as 100% certain as we all like to think we are that the Earth is flat, we cannot prove that beyond a doubt. Conceivably, further technological advances could open up a discovery of an even newer set of observations, which relegate our theory of a round Earth to the pile of ex-truths where we can find a flat Earth and a sun god. Or maybe it is True, and we'll never know. My point is that by subscribing to this idea that there is a definitive Truth, we are missing out on all the little truths we could be ruling out.

Well, I couldn't agree more with what everyone who's posted has to say. I too am bad at memorizing dry facts and I hate the lack of creativity that goes into the lab reports I've written ("the shorter the better" my physics teacher said last year). Having been inspired by our class, I wrote a ton in a document outside of serendip about a few things-- including thinking about the earth being flat/round and whether the sun revolved around the earth or vise-versa from a totally "uninformed"/raw point of view, which was a refreshing exercise. I found a cool website that reminds me a lot of our class (yes, I did google one thing while doing my "raw" thinking about the heavens): http://www.almanac.com/  I would post everything I wrote, but it's really a lot, and I'm assuming serendip is to be used as more of a summarized-writing sort of "place" (?)

I also wrote about how any question of "why" -- including everyday, casual whys like, "why do I always feel so groggy after eating pancakes" or "why isn't he calling me" or "why did she leave without telling me" are all observations that, despite sounding like questions in a sub-par romance novel, have the potential to be explored "scientifically", i.e. they all are observations that could be experimented on. I realize nearly anything you observe can be experimented on. However, I do have one issue with experimentation--- you can never exactly recreate a set of conditions or a context to "retry" something in... you can mimic the original scenario you observed, but simply because time passed, the original scenario has changed. But I guess that's why you only experiment on things that are recurring... a hypothesis is a summary of GENERAL, recurring observations ("the sun rises and sets everyday"). 

I really look forward to this class. On a totally different note (I will bring this up again in person to you, Prof Paul Grobstein): I think it would be excellent if we could have this class around a table instead of in theater rows. It's hard to have a conversation with my classmates about all this interesting stuff when I can't even see them. Do you think it would be possible to have the class in a different room??

-Emily

 Once I heard Professor Grobstein say that science does not deal with creating Truth but creating mistakes and having success failing I thought he was going crazy! It is interesting how all that is needed to create a breakthrough in science is to simply create observations and hope to be wrong to then come up with a better and stronger idea/ observation. The idea that experimenting within the field of science is an ongoing process of simply telling "stories" makes the "natural world" around us a playground full of adventures waiting to be discovered. With this incentive we as scientist can figure out was is wrong and create a better social communities. This week I came to understand that biology is a very useful tool to help create new ways of thinking and analyzing ideas. Although it might create skepticism, this is the beauty of science. Being constantly in question of the observations and summaries that one has created to create satisfaction in theories. The "loopy" scientific method has helped me embrace with more confidence the idea of what science is and how it is a process.  

I think that the idea of science being subjective is a crucial idea to any progression we might have in the scientific world. On a basic level, subjectivity might allow a particular scientist to focus his/her study on a subject that they might have personal experience with, whether it be interest or some connection to that subject. This would drive them to "dig" deeper, creating new observations that could lead to a new(er) story. As was mentioned in class, being subjective also means that there would be several different points of view relating to one observation, which helps to make a new observation seem more legitimate. Where one scientist could have a personal experience, interest, or background in his/her subject, another could have none of the previous with it, creating two completely different views that could eventually form observations into a true statement in their part of the scientific story.