Doug is a UK artist with strong and wide ranging interests in creativity, communication, science and the natural world.
Science doesn’t have the answers to everything we would like to know about reality. What it does have is the most reliable answers and the most reliable ways of looking for answers. When one adopts scientific principles and procedures, one is saying, “I want to understand things as they really are, not simply how I might want them to be.” Science rewards our genuine curiosity, enabling true learning and discovery. It allows (indeed thrives on) openness to new ideas, while fostering a self-critical approach that prevents that open-mindedness from sliding into gullibility. It gives us access to real-world evidence, rather than encouraging us to accept the unreliable testimony of people whose motive may be to exploit us.
Science allows us, with more certainty than any other approach, to distinguish between true and false claims. Because of this, science leads us along the surest and most intellectually honest path to genuine knowledge about the universe in which we live.
4 Comments
Outstanding video...fantastic!...especially the part about leaving science education to those who know what they are talking about. It occurred to me not long ago that the reason American students lag behind other countries in science knowledge is not HOW we teach them but WHAT we teach them. We need to stop paying lip service to the religious community and start teaching evolution and the Big Bang with authority in our schools...from an early age.
Excellent Video! You effectively diagramed some of the common pitfalls in approaching new information and explained empiricism simply in a visually-pleasing and well-paced format. Kudos!
I totally agree that science is the best way to knowledge, and that superstition and theism are poison. My adversaries are now saying:
look what Science has wrought in Japan, now facing an apocalyptic nuclear nightmare. Look at the Manhattan Project and all that flowed from it. Look at potentially catastrophic global warming - the coal-fired power stations would never exist were it not for science. Despite life being nasty, brutal and short back then, mother earth and its sentient beings were actually better off in the stone age.
I reply:
you are confusing science and the scientific method with applied science and engineering.
I would like to present are more convincing rebuttal to their "argument". Can you help me?
I really enjoy your videos. Portugal.Thanks.