WHAT IS SCIENCE

Richard was quite fond of maintaining that the single most important concept in science is the idea that the Universe is made of atoms. This is surely a very useful concept, but is it true? Who cares? Well, I do. So, what is the evidence for the existence of atoms? Convenience is not enough.

I happened to have seen the news footage on TV. about the man who spelled IBM with atoms on a crystal surface. What were these things if they weren't atoms? Then, in 1993, at IBM (by now famous for such things) scientists used an expensive instrument to deposit 48 iron atoms in a nice circle on a flat copper surface and took a picture of the electron wave inside. It looked just like someone was dripping water into a bucket. This is all very bizarre, and surely those were atoms they were playing with. (Please don't call me Shirley)

In the 1980's Hans took a photograph of a barium atom by the glow of its own radiation. The photograph shows a blue dot on a black background. What does this mean? What is going on here? What is the meaning of all this?

Albert said that science is an attempt to coordinate our perceptions and bring them into a logical framework. This is the philosophy of science which all scientists share. (This and the desire to make money and be famous.)

Our perceptions are limited by our senses. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are all thoroughly explained in terms of the chemistry of molecular interactions. These molecular interactions are explained by the electromagnetic interactions involving protons, electrons, and photons. This explanation is popularly known as quantum electrodynamics or Q.E.D.

Wait just a second...what is an explanation? (Why don't people ask this question more often?) People don't like to ask this question because no one likes to answer it. If you ask this question seriously to anyone, you are liable to be met with hostility, so duck your head. In general terms, an explanation is an appeal to causality which satisfies someone. It is making an analogy to something someone is familiar with. This answer is unacceptably vague. Some vagueness can be removed by saying that, in science, an explanation is a rule which (as part of a logically consistent system of definitions of rules and objects) unerringly predicts the thing explained.

What Albert Actually said was more convoluted than what I wrote. It can be said even more simply:

Science is a logical collection of explanations.