This is the first article of the Science and Technology series. So, before all, we choose to discuss what means science.
Science is the process of observing and questioning the world around us. In science, we learn things from observation and experimentation. Science itself comes from the Latin word “Scientia”. It means “knowledge”. And most of the branches in science ended with “ology”. It means “study of” in Greek.
Science involves in everything around us. We can gain knowledge when we follow curiosity and ask a lot of questions and try to find answers for them. Mainly 3 fundamental questions. What, How, & Why. Questioning is one of the main sources of gaining knowledge in science. It’s how Sir Isaac Newton discovered Gravity. I think all of you know how Newton discovered Gravity. Gravity existed even before an apple fell into Newton’s head. He only discovered it by asking a lot of questions and finding an answer to that.
We can mainly classify science into main 3 branches. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Whether it’s Physics, Chemistry, or Biology, any one of the sciences can divide into 2 main categories. Those are Basic sciences and Applied sciences.
Basic sciences are based on asking questions. We can see the people work on basic sciences named as “Scientists”. Scientists can specialize in hundreds of different fields. Each one focuses on different types of knowledge. Physical sciences, Life sciences, Social sciences, etc.
Basic sciences always follow a cycle. It’s called the “Scientific Method”. In the science world, mainly new knowledge comes through the process of this cycle. Then what is the Scientific Method?
Scientific Method was first introduced by the great philosopher and scientist Ibn al-Haytham in the 11th century. Simply the objective of the Scientific Method is to find out the truth. Some say it has 5 steps or 6 steps. I’ll explain briefly what are the steps not how many steps.
1. Observation
All the things start from observing something.
2. Questioning
Then asking questions about the observation.
3. Research
This contains finds out the people asking similar questions. This research could be online or offline.
4. Hypothesis
Proposing possible solutions and assumptions for the question. This is the step of making a theory that is testable to see if your assumption right or wrong.
5. Experimentation
Testing the assumed theory by a set of experiments. This has to be a fair one and make sure conditions are constant.
6. Examine Results & Analyze
After the series of experiments, see whether theory from hypothesis has been supported or refuted.
7. Conclusion
After examining results and analyzing you could see whether your theory is correct or incorrect. Depending on this you may have to change your theory in hypothesis and redesign experiments. This could lead to finding even more interesting questions. This step can be repeated many times until you find the right assumptions or theory, and testing method to find accurate results. That’s why the scientific method is called a cycle process.
8. Share results
When you are satisfied with your results, it’s important to report your conclusion with others. If your results are solid, then your experiments can be repeated by other scientists too. So, the last step is very crucial. Because none will see your findings when you don’t publish it. There is no importance to the world in something like that.
Ok. Now let’s move to the second category. It’s Applied sciences. Applied sciences look at the various uses of the findings from basic sciences. So, applied science depends on the basic sciences. It’s how Medicine, Engineering, IT came to the scene. We all need to know to use this tool efficiently and not to misuse it. Because science has the potential to move mankind into the next level, like Super Civilization or it could fell us into a real hell.
So, this is our basic introduction to what means science. Science has a potential beyond our imagination. Inventho’s one of the main objectives is to awake the scientist in your soul. I think our series of articles will inspire you on this. Our articles can easily observe by any type of people. We hope to bring you more about basic sciences and technologies. If you think our website is useful for you, subscribe to Inventho or like our Facebook page to stay in tune with us.
