(nature of science)
The definition of scientific knowledge is that it is “accumulated by systematic study and organized by general principles”.
Many people think that scientific knowledge is absolute and cannot change, but this is not true, because science is a process for producing knowledge the process is to make careful observations of phenomena and to invent theories out of those observations.
Change in knowledge is necessary, because new observations may demand knowledge of current theories.
Most scientific knowledge is durable, even though scientists reject the thought of they are accomplishing absolute truth. but when there are new information through new technology the knowledge might change. They rather modified ideas than reject them. For example, in formulating the theory of relativity, Albert Einstein did not renounce the laws of Newton of motion but showed them to be only an idea of limited use within a more general concept.
Nowadays we have more powerful data analysis techniques and better equipment for observations and experiments, so we have now much greater intelligence of scientific knowledge.
Medicine changed always over the years. If scientific knowledge would never change, we would not know how to heal many disease and would not even know the existence from many disease.
Or how you entail something to your children, first Mendel found out how genetics works with help from peas. He established the Mendelian laws.
Today people think that the population back in the medieval times thought that the earth is flat, but 2000 years before Columbus Ancient Greek mathematicians had already proven that the Earth was round.
In the medieval times the people did not that the disease is linked with the bad hygiene circumstances back then. Because of lacking hygiene disease spread out very fast. They had no canalization and many rats. They used water from fonts or springs, which could have been easy polluted. Disease were viewed as punishment of god till someone, who is not famous, found out that the people, who did not drink the water nearby the “canalization” were not sick and the people, who did were sick. They built the fonts farther away from the canalization. If this would not have changed we would still believe that diseases are punishments from god.
Continuity and stability are as characteristic of science as change is. It is necessary that scientific knowledge changes, otherwise we would not have new techniques, technology and knowledge and scientists are only humans as well they can also be wrong as “normal” human. So no scientific knowledge is not absolute it can be changed or modified.
http://www.livescience.com/16468-christopher-columbus-myths-flat-earth-discovered-americas.html http://www.project2061.org/publications/rsl/online/SFAA/CHAP1.HTM#ideas http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_1.htm http://www.deutschland-im-mittelalter.de/krankheiten.php
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