Since the dawn of time, man has looked to the heavens and wondered: where did the stars come from? He has looked at the great diversity of plants and animals around him and wondered: where did life come from? He has looked at himself and wondered: where did I come from? Later, he began to ask more complicated questions. He looked in his wallet and asked: where did my paycheck go? Am I on the right bus? Who do you like in the series? To the former questions, at least, science has provided answers.
What is Science? Put most simply, science is a way of dealing with the world around us. It is a way of baffling the uninitiated with incomprehensible jargon. It is a way of obtaining fat government grants. It is a way of achieving mastery over the physical world by threatening it with destruction. Science represents mankind's deepest aspirations - aspirations to power, to wealth, to the satisfaction of sheer animal lusts. The cornerstone of modern science is the scientific method. Scientists first formulate hypotheses, or predictions, about nature. Then they perform experiments to test their hypotheses. There are two forms of scientific method, the inductive and the deductive.
Sound simple? It is. Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science. Today, all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is available to anyone. Popular science books, magazines and computer programs - with their simple, fatuous and misleading prose, their garish illustrations, their flimsy modern production values - have brought science within the reach of anyone who can afford their inflated prices or who can mooch off someone else. Indeed, today a myriad of sources are available to explain science facts that science itself has never dreamed of.
Some fine examples of knowledge (follow the links for a shameless amount of info):
The Universe
The universe began five thousand years ago with the big bang. All the matter in existence, which had been compacted in a tiny ball, explosively flew apart. No one knows what caused it, but kids playing with matches is suspected.As the primordial matter spread out, it began to coalesce into the celestial objects we know today - galaxies, stars, planets and dust bunnies.
Matter & Energy
The early alchemists thought that there were only four kinds of matter, or elements - Earth, Air, Fire and Water.All of the different kinds of matter we see around us were believed to come from mixtures of these four. While this was a good start, four elements alone did not seem to porvide enough diversity to account for all matter. Today we recognize far more elements than the ancients, and can arrange them in a periodic table to make them appear impressive and hard to understand.
The Earth
Since the Earth is a rotating sphere, different points on its surface move at different velocities depending on their platitude. The result of this unequal velocity - the Coriolanus Effect - casues storm systems to rotate clockwise north of the equator and counter-clockwise to the south. This effect even influences which way water in a sink will swirl as it runs down the drain.
Evolution
After the Creosote extinctions, mammals were able to take advantage of the fact that they were endothermic (liked flowers), placental (had bad breath) and quadrupedal (didn't know any better) to spread and diversify.In the Tutelary Age, mammals became the dominant class and grew quite large at times. The great Irish bunny, for example, often had antlers eight feet across.
The Descent of Man
Man and the modern apes are not the only families that descended from the ancestral primates. Many early branches of the hominid tree are now extinct, or survive only in isolated areas.
Plus an Appendix, Glossary, series of Tables & Charts, and Further Reading for the person who wants to know everything!
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