Liberals and Conservatives Both Resist Science, But Differently

[GreatGazoo]

35. Good science and general faith in it results from discussions. Real discussions.

Science itself is a kind of discussion between mankind and the Universe -- questions and theories get tested to produce answers. Data gets aggregated and queried to become multi-variate analysis. Research is peer-reviewed and that is yet another discussion.

I think the blogger presents "science" as a monolith of agreement and of hard facts when it is closer, at its edges if not the center as well, to clusters of theories which explain various phenomena. The word "theory" seems increasingly to be left out by those who present science as a monolith. If science cannot stand up to discussion by those who make the distinction between theory and law then it is perhaps closer to religion than it is to real science.

Also of note is the use of the umbrella term science when most of the discussion and subject matter is in the sub-set of biology. Of all the sciences biology is perhaps the most complex and elusive. At the hard facts and laws end of the range I would put a science like Mathematics or Physics. At the complete other end of the range, the end where things are often just too complex to be reduced to equations and pure numbers, I would put biology. Using the term "science" to mean "biology," or the complimentary "ecology," sets expectations of certainty that Physics can meet but biology seldom does.