“It is come from science, so it must be the truth!”
This is a common situation: when someone tries to defend their opinion about something they cannot directly prove, they rely on “facts” from scientists, or what they believe to be facts from science. However, if you ask a scientist about something in their field, they might respond, “We are not very sure about it, and it needs deeper understanding!” This is true even for the simplest questions—like asking a mathematician “why 1+1 = 2?” or an astronomer “why does the Earth rotate around the sun and the moon around the Earth?” This contrast highlights the central question of this essay: why is there such a difference between the confidence found in general audiences and the uncertainty among professional scientists?
The inconsistency in the knowledge between an average man and an expert in a field can be affected by many factors, which is why it has to be made clear from the beginning. However, there is a distinction between the factors that play a significant role and those that play a minor, indistinguishable role. The difference in the factor will vary depending on the situation, and therefore, we will sometimes encounter overcomplexity or undercomplexity rather than the effective explanation of some things. Then, why do I have to talk about this factor when talking about science? Don’t we always claim to have an answer for every single thing that happens on Earth or even in the entire universe? Then let me pursue you with only one simple example. When you learn physics in high school, have you tried to solve how long it takes for an object to fall to the ground when you release it mid-air? Maybe you even have some experiments to prove that your calculation is correct. But have you noted a tiny sentence always pops up at the end (mostly) of the question: “Ignoring the air resistance.”? Now, you will question yourself, how will it change when you take into account the air resitance? Let me answer it for you: short answer, not so much in the number, long answer, a lot in the equation. Then why doesn’t the school teach you how to do it with the air resistance instead of ignoring it? Are they trying to give you the wrong intuition or what?
No, we don’t!
The point I am going to make that, the correction of solution into taking account of air resistance give very small correlation in most of the scenario case you will see in the course, typicaly a few meters at most. The course of physics in highschool and in the first year of college is not for you to find the exact solution of any physics problem, but rather give you a hint that, how to use mathematical equations to solve for a specific physics problem. After all, beside math, I would rather say that all the scientific subject which involve the experimental observation by their nature, is not the subject of the truth.
But, Phuong, then what is the point of their jobs, if not find the truth? Are they an useless thing?
Then, my friend, don’t worry, my point of view in which is a science is even more wide than your thinking. The role of everything called science is: to “modeling, explaining and predecting”. Is it a little bit complicated with you? Let me breake it down one by one.
Modeling, is starting from a set of assumption, which we can’t explain why it is true but with our generous, accept it and take it as a starting point. After that, we will have a bunch of math equations that have been derived from those assumptions and it is our job to solve it using mathmatical tools. Explaining, is using the results from the model to explain the observation. And Predecting, is to use our model to compute and predict the results for the future observation, aka experiment.
Then, what happend if our results is wrong?
Yes, you point right at the heart of my wonderful opinion, it is the self-consistence of the assumption. In short, if it wrong and you did the math right (this is a must :>), one assumption or all of them is definitely wrong, just how severse it is. We then just have to return to the first step, without the logic or not, get a new set of assumptions and their corresponding equations before solving it and compare it with the results again.
Is it still a little bit complicated or confusing? Then an example will make it much clearer. Assuming that you.