What makes something science
| English | Chinese | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|
| provisional | 暂定的 | zàn dìng de |
| paradigm | 范式 | fàn shì |
| paradigm shift | 范式转换 | fàn shì zhuǎn huàn |
| areas of science | 科学门类 | kē xué mén lèi |
Science is a method, not a list of facts
- The facts change. Continents were fixed, then they moved. Stomach ulcers were stress, then bacteria.
- What makes it science is not that the answers are right, but that there is an agreed way to find out you were wrong.
- Ideas here are provisional 暂定的: they stand until better evidence arrives, and that is a strength rather than a weakness.
What does it mean that scientific ideas are provisional?
A theory can be the best-supported explanation available and still be open to revision.
Paradigms
- A paradigm 范式 is the framework a field works inside — its questions, its methods, what counts as an answer.
- A paradigm shift 范式转换 is when the framework itself changes, not just an answer inside it.
- Continental drift was rejected for decades and then accepted within a few years, because a mechanism arrived and the framework moved.
Put the stages of the continental drift story in order.
The evidence never changed. What changed was whether it could be fitted into a framework.
Why the history is examinable
- Knowing that ideas were once different is what makes "provisional" mean something concrete rather than a word to recite.
- The different areas of science differ in what evidence they can get: an experiment for chemistry, observation over time for geology.
- ⚠ A question asking you to "discuss the contribution of scientific advances" wants both what changed and how the change was accepted.
In one sentence, explain why the different areas of science use different kinds of evidence.
Example: "Chemistry can repeat an experiment in an afternoon, but geology has to read a process that took millions of years."
Why continental drift was rejected.
The evidence was strong: matching coastlines, matching fossils, matching rock formations across oceans.
It was rejected anyway, for forty years, because nobody could say what force could move a continent. Then sea-floor spreading supplied the mechanism, and the same evidence became decisive.
The evidence did not change. What changed was whether it could be fitted into a framework — which is what a paradigm shift is.
Why was continental drift rejected for forty years despite strong evidence?
The evidence did not change; what changed was whether it fitted a framework.
"Provisional" does not mean "unreliable". A theory can be the best-supported explanation available and still be open to revision. Treating those as the same thing is the misunderstanding this unit exists to correct.
Do not write that a theory "was proved". Science accumulates support and eliminates alternatives; it does not prove in the mathematical sense. "Strongly supported" and "no surviving alternative" are the phrases that mean what you want to say.
It is correct to write that a scientific theory "has been proved".
Science accumulates support and eliminates alternatives. "Strongly supported" is the accurate phrase.