What Is Science?

One of the recurrent themes in Michael Crichton's work is our unchallenged belief in Science as a source of answers. To be fair to both Crichton and to Science, I should say that Crichton does not have a problem with Science itself as much as he has a problem with our misunderstandings and misuses of Science. So, this post will begin an attempt to explain the phenomenon of science as well as Crichton's concerns about it.

Some time around the 6th century BCE we began to look away from supernatural explanations of natural phenomena and toward natural explanations. Before this there were stories about Zeus and Apollo. After this there were questions like what are things made of, what are they, and why do they behave the way they do. People who asked these questions were called "natural philosophers" because their focus was the natural world. Contrast this, for example, with "moral philosophers" whose focus was on how people should behave. Note also, that questions of how people should behave is completely out of scope for natural philosophers.

Natural philosophy toddled on for over two millenia before it got two important boosts. Francis Bacon wrote The New Organon which updated the methods of Aristotle, and Isaac Newton discovered gravity. Bacon's method added a new level of rigor to natural philosophy and Newton showed how powerful it was for gathering knowledge.

Over time natural philosophers began to focus less on the larger ideas (how the heavens works) and more on the smaller ideas (what are the different kinds of rocks and plants). The word "scientist" was not actually used until the mid 19th century to distinguish between those people who contemplated the large ideas (natural philosophers) and those who focused on the details (scientists).

Nonetheless, in the past two hundred years science has been amazingly productive leading people to believe that science 1) is infallible and 2) can answer any question. These two beliefs are untrue and it is important to distinguish between was is true and what is untrue about science. That is a theme that crops up over and over again in Crichton's works and it is the theme we will take up next.