"The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts. ...Seek simplicity and distrust it."

--A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature

Anthropology is as much a science as any study of nature relying upon (nearly exclusively) Field Observations, like animal behavior studies in the wild, much of experimental physics at the cutting edge, or Astronomy and Cosmology.

"Science is a system of ideas, a body of statements about the material universe. Only logical consistency and especially the evidence of our sense can serve as a check, a way of assessing the accuracy of our ideas about the world around us. It is a procedural norm of science -- though, curiously enough, a dictum honored most often in the breach -- that when one's thoughts about the way things are supposed to be conflict with what seems to be the actual truth of the matter, we reexamine those notions which led us to erroneous predictions...."

--Niles Eldridge, [curator American Museum of Natural History] Time Frames, 1985, pg. 22

Sixteen Postulates of Science

1. Science is logical (utilizing the appropriate form of logic), reasonable, and rational.

2. Science makes well-defined claims based upon the best available evidence.

3. Scientific hypothesis must be falsifable.

4. Scientific experiments should be repeatable under similar circumstances.

5. Science requires that claims be examined by qualified peers.

6. Science views unexplained gaps in theories or evidence with suspicion.

7. Science requires caution both in performing experiments, and in examining and evaluating evidence.

8. Science requires efforts at objectivity, both in control of variables and of biases.

9. Science does not accept coincidence or unlinked or unproven correlations as proofs.

10. Science does not accept undocumented anecdotal evidence as good proof by itself.

11. Science demands extraordinarily good evidence for extraordinary unconventional claims.

12. Scientific favors parsimony: that the simplest adequate explanation is preferred.

13. Science assumes that the Laws of Nature are universal, if relative.

14. Science demands the honest use of the scientific method and truthful reports.

15. Science demands every effort be made to control or assess all variables.

16. Science needs the uninhibited exchange of ideas and greatest possible discourse of the material.

"The purpose of science is to find order in the chaos of natural phenomena. Science attempts to represent nature as simply and accurately as possible with natural laws--descriptions of how nature behaves. Note that science describes the how but does not attempt to explain the why of nature; it makes no attempt to establish the true and absolute "nature of things." This latter activity belongs to the province of religion. Science, then, is a method, not a subject. It is a method for the organized investigation of nature.
 

The laws of science are the rules of the game that nature seems to play. Some of these rules are extremely well established and appear never to be violated. We cannot, of course, consider them absolute and binding on nature; yet they are so consistent that we believe them almost religiously, and predications based upon them are, to all intents and purposes, "established facts." ...Science, however, deals with other postulates that are by no means so firmly established....
 

Although science does not ascribe an absolutism to its laws, it does not follow that one theory is as good as another.... To the general public, uneducated in even elementary science, and used to many technical miracles, the scientific-sounding jargon and forceful arguments of cranks are often convincing.
 

"Of course scientists do make mistakes--and frequently... But wrong tracks and conflicting views are almost always at the frontiers of knowledge where progress is made by the trial and error process of the scientific method. Moreover, "established" ideas are under continual review and, if necessary, revision; but they are not likely to be rejected entirely.... the burden rests on new theories to predict the results of tests or observations more accurately than the old ones."

--George Abell, Exploration of the Universe, 1969.

©G. D. Goodman

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