d - What Is Science?

Science is one of several instruments of human culture that arose in response to the situation we humans have found ourselves in since prehistoric times: We, who can dream of infinite time and space, of the infinitely good, find ourselves embedded in several worlds:

the physical world,

the social world,

the imaginative world,

and the spiritual world.

It's a condition of being human that we have long sought to discover crafts that give us power over these diverse worlds.

These crafts are now called science, politics, art, and religion.

Now, as in the earliest days, they give us power over our lives and form the basis of our hopes.

Whatever they have been called, there has never been a human society without science, politics, art, and religion.

Now that we've put science in its proper context, we can turn to the question of why it works so well. I believe the answer is simple: Science has succeeded because scientists comprise a community that is defined and maintained by adherence to a shared ethic. it is adherence to an ethic, not adherence to any particular fact or theory, That I believe serves as the fundamental corrective within the scientific community.

There are two tenets of this ethic:

If an issue can be decided by people of good faith, applying rational argument to publicy available evidence, then it must be regarded as so decided.
If, on the other hand, rational argument from the publicly available evidence does not succeed in bringing people of good faith to agreement on an issue, society must allow and even encourage people to draw diverse conclusions.

I believe that science succeeds because scientists adhere, if imperfectly, to these two principles. To see whether this is true, let us look at some of the things these principles require us to do.

We agree to argue rationally, and in good faith, from shared evidence, to whatever degree of shared conclusions are warranted.
Each individual scientist is free to develop his or her own conclusions from the evidence. But each scientist is also required to put forward arguments for those conclusions for the consideration of the community. These arguments must be rational and based on evidence available to all members. The evidence, the means by which they are obtained, and the logic of the arguments used to deduce conclusions from the evidence must be shared and open to examination by all members.
The ability of scientists to deduce reliable conclusions from the shared evidence is based on the mastery of tools and procedures developed over many years. They are taught because experience has shown that they often lead to reliable results. Every scientist trained in such a craft is deeply aware of the capacity for error and self-delusion.
Membership in the community of science is open to any human being. Considerarions of status, age, gender, or any other personal characteristic may not play a role in the consideration of a scientist's evidence and arguments, and may not limit a member's access to the means of dissemination of evidence, argument or information. Entry to the community is, however, based on two criteria. The first is mastery of at least one of the crafts of a scientific subfield to the point where you can independently produce work judged by the other members to be of high quality. The second is allegiance and continued adherence to the shared ethic.
While orthodoxies may become established temporarily in a given subfield, the community recognizes that contrary opinions and research programs are neccessary for the community's continued health.

When people join a scientific community, they give up certain childish but universal desires: the need to feel that they are right all the time or the belief that they are in posession of the absolute truth. In exchange, they receive membership in an ongoing enterprise that over time will achieve what no individual could ever achieve alone.They also receive training in a craft, and in most cases learn much more than they could on their own. Then, in exchange for their labor expended in the practice of that craft, the community safeguards a member's right to advocate any view or research program he or she feels is supported by the evidence developed from its practice.

I would call this community, in which membership is defined by adherence to a code of ethics and the practice of crafts developed to realize them, an ethical community. Science, I would propose, is the purest example we have of such a community.

But it is not sufficient to characterize science as an ethical community, because some ethical communities exist to preserve old knowledge rather than to discover new truths. religious communities, in many cases, satisfy the criteria for being ethical communities. Indeed, science in its modern form evolved from monasteries and theological schools — ethical communities whose aim was the preservation of religious dogma. So if our characterization of science is to have teeth, we must add criteria that cleanly distinguish a physics department from a monastery.

To do this, I would like to introduce a second notion, which I call an imaginative community. This is a community whose ethic and organization incorporates a belief in the inevitability of progress and an openness to the future.The openness leaves room, imaginatively and institutionally, for novelty and surprise. Not only is there a belief that the future will be better, but there is an understanding that we cannot forecast how that better future will be reached.