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Science as Problem-Solving

 

Adapted by Wil Franklin from Paul Grobstein, 2007  "Thinking about Science: Fact versus Story Telling"


 Science as a Never-ending Process of Problem-solving and Question-answering

A traditional perspective

 

A loopy story telling perspective
   

 

Science as body of facts established by specialized fact-generating people and processes

 

Science as successive approximations to Truth

 

 

Science as authority about "natural world

 

Science as ongoing story telling and story revision: repeated making of observations, interpreting and summarizing observations, making new observations, making new summaries ... individually and collectively, Potentially usable by and contributed to by everyone

Science as a process of problem-solving/question answering and if change is the only constant then it is a never-ending

 

Science as skepticism, a style of inquiry that can be used for anything, one which everybody is equipped to to/can get better at/be further empowered by, and contribute to - a way of making sense of what is but even more of exploring what might yet be

 

The crack
  • Multiple stories for a given set of observations
    • 3,5,7, .... ?
    • 1+1=2 or 1+1=10?
  • Observations in turn depend on stories
  • Science is as much about creation as about discovery

If science is as much about creation as discovery then the "crack"is a feature, not a bug ... and differences among people are an asset to the process rather than a problem or an indication it isn't working

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