BIOL 1201 Lecture : Week 1
Document Summary
What is science: body of knowledge, approach to understanding, a way to classify and understand, a study of the natural world, satisfy curiosity. Name for the process of doing science is the scientific method. What do scientists do: make observations, attempt to discern patterns, assume that the future is like the past. Observation generalization or model predictions or hypotheses test. At the end of the test, we"ve created a new set of observations. The cycle repeats itself in a circular process. Asymptotic model, approach reality but never fully reach it. Laws of physics are widely understood, very close to reality. Chemistry is pretty well understood, not as much as physics however. Biology is not very well understood at all, there is a lot of work to do. Terminology: hypothesis a model, prediction that is untested, theory hypothesis which has been tested many times and is supported, law theory that has been tested even more extensively and is very supported.
