 Hi everyone, I'm Hassan. As she mentioned, I'm currently pursuing my PhD in mechanics of materials, which is nothing but a derivative of computer science, physics, and mathematics. So basically science. I've been involved in science for as long as I can remember, and the thing which really fascinates me most about science is the way it works, and the philosophy behind it. So I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the basics of science and how science generally tends to work. So let's get into it. One question which always bothers my mind is... Okay, this really bothers my mind. So the question which really bothers my mind at this point is, what is reality on objectivity? Do these things really exist? See the problem is that each one of us perceives reality in a very different way. And it's usually based on our experiences and senses. It has everything to do with perception. And to illustrate my point, let's look at this image. It's a very famous image, and I'm sure most of you guys have seen it, but just to show of hands, can anyone tell me what they really see in this image? Yeah, please? A woman. A woman, yeah? Anyone else want to take a shot? A young lady. A young lady, cool. So the idea is that it's one picture, but we are getting two conclusions about this image. Could be a young woman or an old lady. Personally, I always see young women. I'm not really sure why, but that's how it is. Interestingly enough, Hanson, a very famous philosopher of science from America, he said that there is much more to seeing than what meets the eyeball. So clearly, our senses are not capable of making objective conclusions about reality. And this is exactly where science comes into play. If you look at the term science, it's originated from Latin, which means to know. And by definition, it's a study of structure and behavior of physical world, obtained through experiments and observations. And if you have a chance to look at the philosophy behind science, you would notice that it tries to resist solution or explanations coming from disciplines such as history, psychology, sociology. And that's how it tends to stay objective. Now, please keep in mind, I'm not saying that these disciplines are bad or not important. What I'm trying to say is that these disciplines may tend to be subjective at times. And the philosophy of science is that it always tries to stay objective as it can. We have seen science work in our daily life. We have seen it pretty much work. So we know that it is doing something right. How do we know it? Because if you base your medicine on science, you end up improving lives. You end up performing miracles. But most importantly, you end up doing this. So you see, the idea behind science is to make objective conclusions about reality. The question is, how does science really does that? And to understand that, we need to look at different elements of science which constitutes to the process of science. So these elements are fact, hypothesis, theory, and law. So what's a fact? A fact is nothing but a general observation that we make about the world around us. So let's say if I go outside in the morning, I can say it is right outside. That's a fact. We all can be objectively understand this fact. The next step in science is to come up with a hypothesis which basically explains why this fact is really happening. So I can propose an explanation which could be we are being invaded by aliens so the sky is lit up right now and that's why it's bright. Or I can say an Armageddon is going on as we speak. And finally, I can say the sun is up. So these are my three hypothesis. The next step in science is to test each hypothesis as critically as possible. But in this example, I can do that by simply going outside and observing what's really happening. And once I do that, I would notice that obviously there are no aliens. Hopefully the world is not ending and clearly the sun is up. So congratulations, we just did a science. Right, so we can move from hypothesis to a theory which is nothing but a well substantiated explanation for a certain phenomena. And for this example, the theory would be when the sun is out, it tends to be bright outside. Notice how this theory has certain elements to it. One, it's a combination of hypothesis which were put to test and the successful ones were taken out. The other critical thing about theory is that it's answering the why question, why it is bright outside. And not just that, it also telling us some future prediction. So I know that when the sun is out, it is going to be bright outside. Unless of course you're in Hamburg and it's gloomy and rainy and you cannot see anything, so that's a different story. So next come law. Law is a statement based on again repeated experiments, but it basically defines some phenomena of nature, often giving us a mathematical premise. And unlike theory, it really answers the what and how question. What is happening and how it is happening. So these are the general elements of science. And like I mentioned before, the process of science is constitutes of all these four elements. These four elements are working together to form the whole process. And to understand the process, let's look at an example. Take gravity for instance. You and I can both agree that if I drop this pointer, it is going to fall down. Gravity? Thanks for that comment. So yeah, gravity is a fact. We can all see that. We can all observe that and it just happens. Let's come up with hypothesis why gravity actually is. So I can say that there is a force of attraction which is pulling this pointer towards the earth. Or there are some magnets which are pulling this pointer. Or some invisible hand which is doing the trick. Luckily for us, for Isaac Newton did this test and he came up with a law called as Newton's gravitational law. And notice how it's giving us a mathematical premise in this case. And for those of you who are not aware of it, it's a very simple law which says that there is always a force of attraction between two bodies having different masses and certain distance between the center point of the two bodies. Albert Einstein on the other hand gave us the theory behind gravity which is general relativity. And I'm not sure if you guys would be interested in this theory at this point, but just to give a general framework, the idea is that the space is not an empty void. It's generally a fabric of space and time. And when a heavy object is put on this fabric, it tends to wrap the fabric around the body, hence creating gravity. So you see this is a general process of science. We start with a fact, build hypothesis, cancel the one which does not make sense, make it law, and then finally end up with a theory. So we have seen different elements of science and we know how they're working together to give us an objective understanding of a certain phenomena. The problem is that these terms that we discussed, theory, fact, hypothesis, they have a certain meaning in science. They're not used like what we use in our daily life. For instance, theory is not just a theory. In science, theory has a very significant meaning. So what I'm going to do is start, I'm going to talk about theory for instance, for now. There are two problems with theory. One, theory has to be the most strongest, robust thing in science. And two, it is extremely difficult to prove a hypothesis so that it can be promoted to a theory. So what is a theory? It is the most powerful explainer that we have in science. It pretty much explains what we're looking for. It tends to bring a diverse phenomena into a small number of assumptions, telling us where something is applicable and where something is not applicable. And interestingly and most importantly, the value of a theory is independent of a psychological influence of the brain which basically created the theory in the first place. So we know at this point that a theory is trying to take away all the biasness and hatred that could be in a certain topic. And finally, a theory may or may not be intuitive. And that's also very interesting. Again here we find out that theory is trying to be as objective as it can be. And like I mentioned before, it is not easy in science to prove a hypothesis. It takes a lot of effort. Just because you have some good result does not mean that you can make a theory out of it. So we have to have some criteria why and when we can promote a hypothesis to a theory. And that problem was solved by Carl Hempel when he gave us the criteria of confirmation and acceptability. And the idea is if a certain hypothesis has elements such as quantity and diversity, precision, support, and simplicity, it can be promoted to a theory. Let's look at the quantity and diversity. So the idea behind quantity is that if I can do multiple experiments and reach the same conclusion, it is going to make my hypothesis extremely strong. And then I can promote it to a theory. On the other hand, if I can diversify my experiments, do some slight changes, and still end up with the same result, it is going to make my hypothesis even stronger. And the simple idea is, again, gravity. It doesn't matter what you drop, the acceleration due to gravity is always going to be the same, no matter where you drop it or which object you drop. The next part is precision of instruments and results. And the idea is what we usually do in science is that once we have a hypothesis, we try to make our instrument and measurements as precise as possible so that we can make our hypothesis much more stronger and promote it to a theory. This was done by Ducke in 1959 when he demonstrated that if he drops various objects from different heights, he was able to calculate the acceleration to an accuracy of one part per exponent 9, which is an extremely high accuracy, which basically tells us that hypothesis for gravity is true. The next factor a hypothesis should have is that it should have support from well-established elements. And for that, let's look at this Newton's law again. Now, using this, I can find out gravity on Earth pretty easily. However, using the same formula, I can hypothesize gravity on pretty much any other planet, even though I have not even conducted that experiment. Why? Am I hypothesizing it? Because it is based on a very well-established law. That's why my hypothesis is extremely strong. We actually did that before Apollo 11, the first man mission to Mars. We were able to calculate the gravity on Moon even before we landed there. And when we did, we measured it and it was true. It was correct. And the final thing a hypothesis should have is simplicity. And the best example I can give you guys right now is this. I think it's an equation everybody is familiar of, although nobody quite really understands what it means. But it is one of the most elegant and beautiful equations that you can ever come across in your life. And the simplicity of it tells us that there is certain truth behind it. Not just simplicity, I mean, it has a very strong mathematical premise as well, but that's a different issue. So this theory is based on three very fundamental laws of physics, which are energy conservation, Doppler effect, and finally, special relativity. And again, for those of you who are not aware of it, conservation law says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only change form. Doppler effect tells you that if you're moving towards or away from a source of sound, the way you perceive it is different. And special relativity says that time is not absolute, it's relative. If you look at the mathematics behind these three laws, you would notice that they would end up with this equation. And when Einstein hypothesized this, the simplicity of it said that there is a certain element of truth behind it. And I think Richard Feynman captures it in a very nice way when he said, you can always recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. All right, these factors have to be in a theory so that it can be robust and the most important thing in science. And this basically brings me to the end of my talk. What have we learned is the first question. We know that our senses and our experiences are not capable of making objective conclusions about reality. Science is doing that for us. How? The way science works. It has different elements, fact, hypothesis, theory, law. They all work together to make the process of science and this process ensures that your conclusion is always objective. I'm not saying that science is the perfect thing we have and it has no flaws. No, there are plenty of flaws in science. I'm just saying that at this point, science is the best tool we have to understand reality. There is no other way around it. Before I end my talk, I wanted to talk about a small misconception which I hear all the time. And this being that evolution is just a theory. Right, so the next time somebody says that to you, you're supposed to tell them that evolution is not just a theory. Evolution is a fact. Why? Because throughout the centuries, throughout the years, we have seen different animals, reptiles, fushas, changers from one to another and everybody agrees that it did happen. Evolution is a fact. What scientists did is that they made different hypotheses for that. One of them being catastrophism, uniform materialism and natural selection. Once we have those hypotheses, there were gazillions of tests and countless specimens were captured and we finally concluded with the theory which is based on natural selection and we called it the theory of evolution by natural selection. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Hassan. Let's take some questions. Oh, wow. Okay, let's take it from here. So, I'm just a disclaimer. I'm a future ranked scientist. It's a science, the ultimate alternative to fact machinery. Why am I saying this? Let's connect it to the talk previous. You know, you saw how much data is being gathered by, you know, different online companies and whatever and so it's not in the process of deriving the hypothesis. It's in the choice of the data sets that you choose to make this hypothesis. If I have three dimensions, I will see some projection or some sort of a conclusion. If I add a third and a fourth dimension in my data set that I base my conclusions upon, I will have completely different maybe antagonistic conclusions about the very same fact. So, by this method, it doesn't have to be anything shady in the data analysis so I will be able to create whatever fact I want from whatever observations I have. So, the question is... The question is, is it true that basically our scientific conclusions are based on what kind of data we select and if we select different data, we can find support for all kinds of hypothesis that we have. There's a certain element of truth in what you're saying and unfortunately in science, like in every other field... There are people who are doing bad research, who are collecting wrong facts, trying to come up with explanation which is taken from wrong data set and that's true. However, the good thing about science is that let's say you give me an explanation which is fake. Somebody else from some other place is always going to put a counter paper which is going to point out your mistake and no matter... no matter where ever you are in the world at which location, science is basically working on everything simultaneously and everybody is trying to make sure that they can come up with the truth. So, even if somebody is not doing the right thing, his scientific reputation or her scientific reputation is in trouble because if somebody can come up with right things, then the reputation is completely gone. Okay, thank you. I think you can continue after the talk certainly and this discussion is very interesting. I thought that we have more questions, please. One question. In your talk you said like, okay, science is about understanding reality or trying to find out the truth. But then what I would like to ask you is, is science about making objective statements about the world that exists around us or is it about finding the truth? To clarify my question, because it seems like pretty abstract. Quantum mechanics, for example, it makes really real claims that things can exist at ten places at the same time. So, would you say that the role of a scientist is to understand the world around him or he should be an emotionless machine and just try to make, you know, call observations about the world. What would you say to that? So, the question is, if a scientist is a machine to just, yeah, objectively, is the job of scientist to just objectively state what's around us or to understand and to find out the truth about the world. Is he a philosopher or is he a data scientist? Okay, are scientists more philosophers or data scientists? You've played an example of quantum science, quantum physics, and I think it's a very good example that actually fits in your question. Understanding reality is by no means an easy feat. It's extremely difficult to understand reality. But what I'm submitting right now is that science is the best tool we have to make that claim that this is the explanation for reality. Not anything else. Just science is just claiming that this is the explanation for this phenomena. It might be wrong. It can prove to be wrong at a certain point in future. It's certainly going to happen at some point. Science does not claim that it knows everything. But the idea is that the process, how it really works, we are converging towards finding reality, finding meaning, and all sorts of scales. Megascales, minute scales of an atom, we talked about quantum physics to answer that. Thank you, Hassan. So I saw there are more questions. I know, guys, you want to ask them, but I also want you to give you a chance to discuss in a closer circle after the talks. So we will now move on. Thank you very much, and please approach him to ask more of your nasty questions.