This material for UGA GEOL 1122 consists of five pages:
1. What Science Is
What is science?
Why do science? I - the individual perspective
Why do science? II - the societal perspective
How research becomes scientific knowledge
Science and change (and Miss Marple)
Science and knowledge
2. What Science Isn't
What science isn't I: A historical perspective on scholasticism and science
What science isn't II: Science isn't Art
What science isn't III: Science is not technology
What science isn't IV: Science isn't Truth, and it's not certainty
What science isn't V: Science isn't Religion, or a religion
3. Scientific Thought: Facts, Hypotheses, Theories, and all that stuff
4. Definitions of Science
Definitions by goal and process
Definitions by contrast
Not quite definitions, but critical statements
1122 students are expected to read at least the four pages above. The fifth, below, is optional:
5. A Tabular History of Scientific Ideas Challenging Fundamental Notions of the World
The sixth is likewise optional:
6. Science and its societal implications
Some other webpages on "What is Science?"
. . . for a Physical Science course at Arizona State University.
. . . for an Earth and Atmospheric Sciences class at Saint Louis University. (brief but good)
. . . from a lecture series at the University of South Alabama (probably the best of these three).
Some other relevant webpages:
. . . A history of gravitational theories from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein.
. . . Some links on astronomer Maria Mitchell.