Psychology 115W

Professor Lappin

February 9, 2001

Perceptions and Science

When one drops a basketball from the top of a two story building science has proven that gravity pulls down on the basketball with an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second. This statement seems innocent as well as insignificant in today’s society; however, to correctly word this statement one rewrites it as: "When one drops a basketball from a the top of a two story building one perceives that the basketball accelerates downward at 9.8 meters per second." Through our human perceptions, we are forced to conclude that though science attempts to grasp natural occurrences as truth, there are no absolute truths.

Perception is defined as "the process of interpreting sensory information from the receptor organs to produce and organized image of the environment." Or more simply stated, perception is our interpretations using our human senses of the outside world. For example, our eyes tell us that through multiple experiments all objects accelerate towards the Earth at 9.8 meters per second. We assume that there must be some force in which we arbitrarily call gravity acting on the basketball. The gravity is a human word that explains our perceptions of the basketball accelerating to the Earth; however, humans are limited in that we only are able to conclude that gravity exists by using our senses. We can not only possible imagine the endless number of senses that might change drastically our view of gravity. Thus, we arrogantly call gravity the absolute truth when really "gravity" is simply an interpretation of our limited senses. One might ask, "how is it that we as humans use science as means to label natural phenomena?"

Bronowski describes science as "a stable body of knowledge which at any moment is closed and yet always changing- and if that is really going to be dynamic, yet stable, then you have to build in the conditions and the safeguards for absolute integrity"[Bronowski, 133]. The paradox that science "at any given moment is close and yet always changing" tells a lot about our society as a whole. Society wants answers. Our thirst for answers is so great that we will believe as truth anything that claims to be backed by the magical words, "scientific proof." Science is changing because of "belligerent, contrary, questioning, challenging men"[Bronowski, 120]. These men are the exceptions to society and Bronowski believes they are part of the solution: "you do not invent a new world system by being satisfied with what other people have told you about how the world works"[Bronowski, 121]. The second part of the original statement speaks of the necessity for integrity in science. Bronowski elaborates on the communal values of "honesty, integrity, dignity, and authenticity" which are of chief importance in order for the scientific community as a whole to be able to work together efficiently"[Bronowski, 132]. Science especially in the last century has make much more relative progress than in previous centuries because scientists are able to work together using modern inventions like the telephone, e-mail, and other forms of modern communication. If scientists are able to communicate and if scientists have integrity and if scientists follow proven methods in various experiments, what is it that I still claim that their finding cannot be absolutely true?

The answer is really very simple. Bronowski states: "scientists never discuss ends, they only discuss means, the steps by which you get from today’s knowledge to tomorrow’s knowledge"[Bronowski, 126]. Science is constantly disproving and reproving truth. By these statements I mean science is constantly improving their own theories which the theories themselves are nothing more than the scientists perceptions of experiments. That is, science by its nature of interpreting the outside world through the scientists perceptions never knows the "big picture truth."