AoK 2: Natural Sciences - Hey Tou Chiu

"Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called a science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house." (Henri Poincare, 1854-1912)

The quote above basically tries to explain how science cannot be defined as a ‘collection of facts’ in the same way as how a pile of bricks cannot be called a house. Henri Poincare tries to tell us how facts by themselves are not science because they involve much more. Science includes creative thinking, wild imagination, data collection, experiments/tests. However, this is not to say that facts are not needed.

I find myself agreeing with him. I believe that scientists investigate on something new to them or something that they are curious about by forming hypotheses of things. More importantly, they use the existing knowledge and facts that they have to prove or discover more about things unknown to them. Like the ‘black box’ activity, the class did the same thing in order to find out what was inside the ‘box’. The calculation, observations, guesses, and imagination is what allowed us to identify some of the items that were inside the parcel. I think that this whole process is what defines science.