How does science become accepted as science?

Answer 1

Science becomes accepted science through a process of observation, experimentation, and peer review known as the "scientific method." What is "accepted" as science is usually determined by how long something has been known. If a theory has consistently explained a phenomenon and many experiments have been done that validate the theory, the explanation would be considered a scientific law.

What makes an "explanation," however is the scientific method. There are four general steps to this method:

1. Observe. Collect data about how things work in the real world. If you were studying gravity, you might throw and drop some objects to see what happens. You would observe that they all tend to fall back to the ground.
2. Hypothesize. Using the information you observed, create a statement about what you believe to be true about the world. Thinking about the objects you threw around in the observation stage, an hypothesis might be "All objects affected by gravity fall at the same rate."
3. Predict a Result. Now that you have an hypotheses, you must think of a situation in which the hypotheses makes sense. For our gravity example, you might predict that if all objects fall at the same rate, two objects dropped at the same time should hit the ground at the same time.
4. Experiment. You must determine whether the prediction you made was correct. This requires setting up a situation that is close to a real-world situation - falling objects - but allows you to measure what is taking place. You might drop the objects separately but measure how much time it takes for each to drop in order to see if they both fall in the same amount of time.

Once all four steps have taken place, you will have either proved or disproved your original hypotheses. More importantly, however, you would then make all the work you did publicly available. This allows other people to try out your experiments on their own, and modify your hypotheses. For example, if you dropped a rock and a piece of paper in your experiment, you would see that the rock dropped faster, seemingly rejecting your hypotheses. However, if someone else who had access to a vacuum chamber saw your results, he might speculate that the result would be different in an airless environment and retest it, proving your hypotheses.

Once something has been thoroughly observed, thought about, tested and re-tested over a long period of time by many people, it will generally be recognized as a scientific law. This means that when people use this hypotheses to predict what will happen in the real world, it accurately models what really happens. This is when you could say that an hypotheses has been fully accepted as "science." Yet in science something like the theory of gravity will always remain a theory unless tested in that instance. If Sally jumped off a bridge and fell seventy stories to her death, you can say in that instance that the theory of gravity was in effect and so gravity was a fact in that instance and so a science. If Sally was to jump off the bridge and then found herself continually move upwards in relation to the bridge you can say that the theory of gravity was not in play during that instance. However, the theory of Newton's 3 laws of motion was in effect. An object (Sally) in motion (her jumping) will stay in motion, and For every action (her jumping) there is an equal but opposite reaction (her moving upwards after jumping). Based on the circumstance you can say what Newtons theory was fact in that instance and say for that instance the theory of gravity was not a fact or in effect, and say that the area sally was in had zero gravity. However you can always hypothesize that a theory will remain in play no matter what, like gravity will still be in effect while I sleep, and it is highly likely it will but until it happens it is a hypothesis and so a theory not a fact and so not science. This is why a fact is based on past experiments and a hypothesis is based on future experiments or experiment, but the theory will always remain a theory unless tested or shown in a past instance.