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Science Is A Search For Order in Nature
Science Is A Search For Order in Nature
Herbert Bormann, forest ecologist Gene Likens, and their colleagues began
carrying out such a controlled experiment. The goal was to compare the loss of water and soil nutrients
from an area of uncut forest (the control site) with one that was stripped of its trees (the experimental
site).
Science Is a Search
for Order in Nature
Science is an attempt to discover how nature worksand to use that knowledge to make
predictions about what is likely to happen in nature. It is based on the assumption that events in
the natural world follow cause-and-effect patterns in orderly ways that can be understood
through careful observation, measurements, experimentation, and modeling.
There is nothing mysterious about this process. You use it all the time in making decisions. As the
famous physicist Albert Einstein put it, “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement
of everyday thinking.” Here is an example of applying the scientific process to an everyday
situation:
Here is a more formal outline of steps scientists often take in trying to understand nature.
Identify a problem.
Find out what is known about the problem.
Ask a question to be investigated.
• Collect data to answer the question..
Propose a hypothesis to explain the data. Scientists suggest a scientific hypothesis—a
possible and testable explanation of what they observe in nature or in the results of their
experiments.
Make testable projections. Scientists make projections about what should happen if an
hypothesis is valid and then run an experiment to test the projections.
Test the projections with further experiments, models, or observations. Accept or reject
the hypothesis.
Four important features of the scientific process are curiosity, skepticism, peer review, and
reproducibility. Scientists are curious, and they delight in uncovering new information and ideas
about how nature works. But they tend to be highly skeptical of new data, hypotheses, and
models until they can be tested and verified. Science is a community effort. And an important
part of the scientific process is peer review, in which scientists openly publish details of the
methods and models they used, the results of their experiments, and the reasoning behind their
hypotheses for other scientists working in the same field (their peers) to evaluate. Also, any
evidence gathered to verify a hypothesis must be reproducible. That is, scientists should repeat
and analyze the work to see if the data can be reproduced and whether the proposed hypothesis
is reasonable and useful. A scientific theory should be taken very seriously. It has been tested
widely, supported by extensive evidence, and accepted by most scientists in a particular field or
related fields of study.
Another important and reliable outcome of science is a scientific law, or law of nature—a well-
tested and widely accepted description of what we find happening over and over in the same way
in nature. A fundamental part of science is testing. Scientists insist on testing their hypotheses,
models, methods, and results over and over to establish the reliability of these scientific tools and
the resulting conclusions.
Organic Compounds
Are the Chemicals of Life
The millions of known organic (carbon-based) compounds
include the following: