What Does Science Aim to Accomplish? How do Researchers accomplish this?
It is important for a scientific researcher to know what the purpose of science is and what it aims to accomplish before jumping into the researching process. From a scientific researcher’s perspective, science is used to temporarily answer questions about the natural world and to eliminate false claims to come closer to reaching truth. In Babbie’s article "Observing Ourselves", he claims that science aims to “keep lines of inquiry open”. Refutable theories are constantly being retested and reframed. Babbie says that we must “realize that everything we know today is likely to be overturned at some point in the future."
The aim of science is not to find definite answers to all of the questions that the society has about the natural world. Rather, it is to find the best answer to those questions at that time. Science is often used to weed out the wrong answers to get closer to the truth, although we may never reach it and if we do there is no way of knowing that it has been reached. We do not have any way of knowing whether or not what we know now will hold true through the test of time. Although science may not be capable of telling us what truth is, it is capable of telling us what is false. Each time an idea or experiment is deemed unsuccessful or unreliable, it is logical to throw those ideas out. Each idea that is thrown out of the possibilities leads the researcher that much closer to the truth.
Scientific researchers accomplish the aims of science in a very specific way. The scientific method is used to accomplish the aims of science and a common practice amongst scientific researchers. Depending on your personal beliefs, the process either begins with a question or an observation that does not match your preconceived expectations. Hypotheses are developed from our questions and then the experiment is conducted using specific methods and materials. Data is recorded, analyzed, and used to come to a conclusion about what the results mean. There are independent and dependent variables involved and a null hypothesis is developed to show that there is no relationship between the variables.
The aim of science is not to find definite answers to all of the questions that the society has about the natural world. Rather, it is to find the best answer to those questions at that time. Science is often used to weed out the wrong answers to get closer to the truth, although we may never reach it and if we do there is no way of knowing that it has been reached. We do not have any way of knowing whether or not what we know now will hold true through the test of time. Although science may not be capable of telling us what truth is, it is capable of telling us what is false. Each time an idea or experiment is deemed unsuccessful or unreliable, it is logical to throw those ideas out. Each idea that is thrown out of the possibilities leads the researcher that much closer to the truth.
Scientific researchers accomplish the aims of science in a very specific way. The scientific method is used to accomplish the aims of science and a common practice amongst scientific researchers. Depending on your personal beliefs, the process either begins with a question or an observation that does not match your preconceived expectations. Hypotheses are developed from our questions and then the experiment is conducted using specific methods and materials. Data is recorded, analyzed, and used to come to a conclusion about what the results mean. There are independent and dependent variables involved and a null hypothesis is developed to show that there is no relationship between the variables.