Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Views of Science & of Religion

Science has been described as "the stories we tell to convince ourselves that everything is all right in the world." This quotation presumes that science is a comforter rather than a search for truth, a set of stories more important for the effect they have on those who tell and hear them than for their relationship to the facts of the real world. However, the quotation seems misdirected. Science involves experimentation and evidence and not stories as such. The quotation would appear to be more applicable to religion than to science, for religion is to be accepted on faith and might be seen by non-believers as only a set of stories intended to comfort us. Science does not concern itself with whether or not what is learned is a comfort or a source of anxiety--it simply tries to found out the truth and present us with a picture of what the world is really like.

There are different views of science, and they can be seen as indicative of the degree to which science can be considered an objective search for the truth. Human beings have sought to understand the world in which they live since the beginning of human thought. At one time, humans ascribed supernatural explanations for the events of the world, assuming that there were spirits that caused wind, rain, fire, floods, and so on. Philosophy began when human beings undertook a more systematic attempt to explain the world to themselves. Such attempts were rational, but they also could fit the quotation above in that the ideas produced by the early Greek philosophers were indeed stories they told to comfort one another that the meaning of the universe could be discerned and that the working of the universe could be explained. Natural philosophy would not become science until the development of the scientific method, a method of experimentation and testing to prove a theory.

The subject matter of science and the subject matter of religion do not coincide precisely. Sci...

Page 1 of 11 Next >

More on Views of Science & of Religion...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Views of Science & of Religion. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 05:26, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700910.html