Science and Truth

What does it mean to know something is true?

If someone tells you that white light is composed of many different colors of light, would you believe them?  What would need to happen for you to think that their statement is true?

Would you believe them because they had a Ph.D. from MIT on their wall?  Would you believe them because they were a professor at Harvard?  Would you believe them because they had a logical argument?

One of the most interesting scientists of all time was Richard Feynman.  He won the Noble Prize in Physics for work he did in the field of Quantum Electro-Dynamics.  He was kind-of a smart guy.  He had some interesting words about science and truth.

This makes white light?  What is your evidence?

Copyright  © 2009-2012, by Marcus Milling

edited by Julia Pian

“Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation .... Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

(Richard Feynman, from the book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out)

Is Feynman saying that the experts in each field of science don’t know what they are talking about?  That they are stupid or untrustworthy?  Well, no, but he is saying that you should not believe them simply because they are experts.  You should only believe them because they can present evidence that their statements are true.  What is evidence? 

Evidence is a series of measurements made on physical systems, during an experiment, which show the system behaves in a specific way.  Quite simply the measurements show the system behaves in one way and not in another way.  The experiment and the measurements should also be repeatable.  This means different scientists in different places should be able to repeat the experiment and get similar measurements.

If the smartest scientist in the world, with degrees from MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, and Oxford, comes up with a really interesting idea and has a great logical argument, no scientist will say the idea is true until the smart-guy comes up with physical evidence.

Discovering the facts of science is not what this course is largely about.  Learning the facts of science is only marginally useful.  Learning how to discover these facts on your own, and understanding the evidence (think measurements and observations) that support them as true, is the point of what you will be doing in science this year.  This could be a very different process than what you are used to in a class.  We will begin each new topic with an experiment in which we ask questions and then you try to make observations and measurements to find evidence that helps answer the questions.

In this way your work in the lab will be the most important part of the class to help you learn science.  In general, you will not be told what the answer is. Instead, you will have to find the answer in your experiments (of course your teacher is here to help with that process).  This is a challenging way of learning, but it is also the best way to learn.  This method allows you to work and learn more independently, which prepares you to find your own answers in life.  It is also much more fun to learn this way because it means you will spend most of your time in this class doing experiments with your partner, rather than sitting and listening to the ‘expert’.

Similarly, this online text is not meant to be the main source by which you gain an understanding of physics.  It is your lab experiments that are of primary importance in your learning.  This text is mean to support what you learn from your experiments and to emphasis the core concepts from those experiments.

Well, now you know a little a bit of what to expect this year.  Just two more pieces of advice before we get started:

1. (1) Ask lots of questions, but think before you ask them!
   

2. (2)For the text reading, it is very important that you look at all the diagrams and pictures that go along with the writing and read the captions carefully.  Also, make sure to watch the demo videos that are found throughout the text.  Some of these videos are part of the textbook and some are labeled EWS, which take you to an external website to view demo videos from other sources.
   

You will need Quicktime installed on your computer to view the demo videos.  Almost all computers these days have quicktime pre-installed, but if yours does not for some reason you can go here for instructions on how to download it for FREE.

Good luck this year!