 So, the process of science is not a linear thing as implied by the scientific method. And one of the most inspiring and interesting and dynamic illustrations of this process is an interactive image, web thing. It's an interactive web thing from UC Berkeley on their Science 101 website. Check this thing out. I just clicked on the flow chart and it's really, really cool because once you stick your little mouse, hover your mouse over one of the areas. So, look, I just hovered it over exploration and discovery, which is definitely a component of the process of science. It blows up to this incredible complex web of parts that are involved in exploration and discovery. You'll notice that you can actually click on each one of these various categories and it'll take you to more information. You can get quite lost looking at all the information on this. But I love how it illustrates, there's nothing linear about this. Not only does each little colored bubble, community analysis and feedback, what an important part of the process of science, this feedback and review, having your research findings replicated. This is having conversations with colleagues, new ideas and theory building based on information that comes from other people. This is all very dynamic and creative and not linear. And you'll notice that it totally feeds into the testing of ideas and the exploration and discovery and the benefits and outcomes of science. So, I'm showing this to you at the beginning here just so that you have some perspective of are we really going to talk about all of this in one lecture? Well, no, of course not. But throughout the course of the entire semester, as we talk about the process of science, these are the components. And you might just go check this website out and fiddle with this. I am going to make a list. So, this is a static image. You can also access the static image. This site is incredible because they give you access to this tool in many, many, many forms. But this is the static image in our notes. I'm sure you can't read it very well, but I'm just going to tag, make some comments along the side about the process of science. Some facts that I think are worth just bringing to light and having, having some acknowledgement of. The first one is one that I've already said many times. There is no one, there is no one scientific method. And instead, it's the process of science and it's messy and it's web-like and it's really, really cool and interesting and not recipe-like and plotting. The second thing that I want to throw out there for your consideration is the fact that I think we need to be really honest about this. Scientific discoveries, scientific information often can clash with cultural and religious values or dogma and this can create confusion. So, science can clash with religion and politics. I always struggle to use the word politics because I don't really know what that means. And I have a sense, but I can't really define it. It's kind of like having to force myself to define the word fact. It was like, oh, like, yes, we can get that down. I can't define what politics are. I do think that it's often I have been accused of being political and I think it's important to not allow that accusation. I'm fully aware that politics and religion and my personal beliefs need to stay out of a science class. We're talking about scientific information and the process and facts and recognize that sometimes we end up with these conflicts that are, they can be messy and confusing for folks. I think the next little fact or observation that I have here is that, and it's related to this, that science doesn't make value or moral judgments. It does not do value or moral judgments. I don't have enough room over here for what I am going to try to do. So, we're not sure where I'm going to go next with how I'm going to fill all my pieces in. It doesn't make the value or moral judgments for you, but it does provide the facts, the observations, the information that you can use to make those values, the value and moral judgments. Another really important, like, let's separate these things out. Science is a tool that does certain things. Values and morality and faith are different. Those are different things that science can inform, but science isn't it. If we want, not everything can be studied with science. If you want to use science to study something, let's say it like that. Science only studies things that are observable. Dude, I'm sorry for how tiny this is. Falsifiable and testable. You can't study something using the process of science if you can't test it. If you don't know what it would look like to falsify it, to prove it not true, and if you can't actually observe things about it, that means that not everything can be studied with science, and I think that's really important. This is another little, like, oh, of course. Sometimes experiments fail, and that isn't bad. Maybe that should go on to our definition list as well, because a fail, like all of us, like if something fails, dude, I'm trying to learn Spanish through Duolingo right now, and when I get a question wrong, like my whole body has this, like, reaction to the red light, and the different sound that comes up when Duolingo tells me why did you get that wrong, you dummy. Like, I have this whole, like, response to failing, and experiment, like, it isn't bad when an experiment doesn't give you the results that you expected. There's learning to be done in that. There's information that comes when an experiment, what you expected, isn't the outcome that you get. Along those lines, I'll put this one, it is pretty much impossible to control all variables, which means it's impossible to build a perfectly clear scientific experiment. So there's always, in fact, we don't use the word prove to describe results in science. Like, you don't prove something or disprove something. You provide evidence that supports or doesn't support something, but you don't ever approve it, because there always could be more information out there. I'm going to put that down there. You don't prove things. And I say, like, I think that's really important to name, because people may go, well, if you don't prove anything ever, then I don't have to listen to you tell me that I should be masking or that I should get a vaccine. Like, science can't prove anything. So I don't have to listen anymore. I think we got to be really careful. Science changes. Oh my gosh, this is my number, this is my number seven in my list here, is that, yeah, we don't prove things because and number eight is that science changes over time. So where am I going to put number eight up here? Science changes over time. And that's good. That means we're learning more. That doesn't discount the process. And it doesn't discount the knowledge that we had in them before we have the tools or the insights or the processes to study further. So I think that's really important. I actually didn't have that wasn't number eight. Super important. I'm going to go number nine. I'm adding one to my list. It's not always experimental. What a mess of notes. I'll try to do better. Science, the process of science doesn't always involve doing an experiment. It can involve observations, watching something, like, right? Like you can totally learn about something just by watching and making observations and you can write up your results of watching and learning. And that has value. The experiment is not always there. In our class, the experiments are fun. I enjoy that kind of logical process of trying to get good evidence and answer questions that you have through the process of science. But that's not always the case that we would have an experiment. Okay, that's sort of an unorganized pile of things to consider as we move forward. Next up, we're going to talk about some of the assumptions that we make when we talk about science as well as some of the limitations of science. And I bet that you, given what we've done so far in two relatively lengthy clips about science so far, I bet you'd be able to come up with some of those assumptions and some of those limitations.