It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.
Thomas HuxleyRead
Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
Interpretation
Science organizes knowledge gained through observation and reasoning into systematic frameworks.
This quote by Thomas Huxley emphasizes that science is fundamentally an extension of natural human reasoning. It presents the idea that science is not an abstract discipline, but rather a structured method of utilizing our inherent common sense to understand and analyze the world around us through observation, experimentation, and logical reasoning.
In practice
In a classroom setting when teaching students about the scientific method.
It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.
The child who has been taught to make an accurate elevation, plan, and section of a pint pot has had an admirable training in accuracy of eye and hand.
Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity.
It is the first duty of a hypothesis to be intelligible.
Of the few innocent pleasures left to men past middle life, the jamming of common sense down the throats of fools is perhaps the keenest.
Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come . . . . Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate.
The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an exorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says "yes" to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says "Maybe," and in the great majority of cases simply "No." If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter "Maybe," and if it does not agree it means "No." Probably every theory will some day experience its "No" - most theories, soon after conception.
I can easily conceive, most Holy Father, that as soon as some people learn that in this book which I have written concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, I ascribe certain motions to the Earth, they will cry out at once that I and my theory should be rejected.
Science is a way of getting knowledge. It's a method. It's a method that really relies on making mistakes. We propose ideas, they are usually wrong, and we test them against the data. Scientists do this in a formal way. It's a way that everyone can go through life; that's how we should be teaching science from a very young age.
One of the things that science fiction gets to do is thought experiments about the human condition that would be impractical or unethical to conduct in real life.
Innovation is everyones responsibility, not just R&Ds.
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