By Richard Gallagher
Why the Philosophy of Science Matters
The central tenets of science enhance communication and our influence on society.
You might expect that newly minted science graduatesﾠ-ﾠwho presumably think
of themselves as scientists, and who I'd thought of as scientistsﾠ-ﾠwould have a
well-developed sense of what science is. So it's pretty shocking to discover that a
large proportion of them don't have a clue. At least that's the case in the UK,
going on the evidence of our Opinion author James Williams ("What Makes Science 'Science'?"). He found that a
sizeable proportion of science graduates entering teacher training couldn't define
what is a scientific fact, law or hypothesis. One young innocent, for instance,
defined scientific theory as "an idea about something, not necessarily true." If
that isn't playing into the hands of creationists, then I don't know what is!
