“Science is built with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.”
-Jules Henri Poincare – French mathematician and scientist (1854-1912).
Compose a statement:
What is the importance of facts in biology?
And what makes those facts science?
To me science, especially biology, has always been a subject based heavily on fact. However, Poincare’s analogy leads me to recognize science’s dependence on not only fact but the pertinence of the connection of those facts. Members of society depend on fact in order to attain truth. However, simple facts do not serve much of a purpose without being connected to other facts. For instance, on a historical level, it is a fact that Columbus set out on a journey from Spain in 1492. However, this fact does not become significant to us until we include that America was “discovered” during this journey. In science the connections between facts become a bit more complicated but their importance is of equal magnitude. If it is fact that the human race has formed due to evolution, this holds little significance without the other facts that have supported this conclusion including the fact that the human race holds similar qualities to certain strains of monkeys. In all, science exists to find fact and thus provide members of society with a path to truth, that truth being woven through many connected facts.
By: Katie on January 30, 2008
at 11:39 pm
