What Is Science

◎英国大使馆文化教育处

A

What is science? The answer is either very difficult or very easy.I’ll go with the easy one: everything.Science is the study of… everything,from things so small that they cannot be seen to the universe itself, which is everything there is and so big it never ends! Science is the study of the world we live in and all the things that live (or don’t) in it, including us,people.

B

If you are reading this, then you must be a person.Or maybe not.You could be a computer, of course, which is something very important in the world of science these days, and becoming more and more important all the time.Time: there’s another big science word, one of the biggest.Time has been one of the most important subjects for some of the greatest scientists throughout history, and what is “history” itself if not Time?

C

Anyway, we don’t have time to worry about that.So let’s return to the meaning of the word “science”:the study of everything.To test if my meaning works, I have tried to think of things — any things, real or not real —that have not been studied by some sort of science.

D

And I can’t.Can you? Try...

...How about “nothing”? Surely “nothing” can’t be studied by science.But then I remember that “nothing” has been one of the most important and difficult subjects throughout the great history of the science of philosophy: the study of “being”.

Activity 1 Which answers or examples a–f go with which question 1–6?

1.What does a biologist study?

2.What does a chemist study?

3.What does a mathematician study?

4.What does a philosopher study?

5.What does a psychologist study?

6.What does an astrophysicist study?

a.H2O, O2, H2, CO2.

b.Animals and plants.

c.E = mc2.

d.The stars.

e.How and what people think and feel.

f.I think, and so I am.

Activity 2 Complete the sentences.

Look at the use of the words “must”, “could” and “maybe” in part B of the story.Now use those words to complete the spaces 1–3 in the conversation between Ike and May below.Use each word once.

Ike: Do you think there is other life beyond our planet?

May: ____1____ , yeah.Who knows? There ____2____ be.Yeah, it’s possible!

Ike: Possible?! It’s more than possible! Look at how big the universe is and how many stars there are in it: billions and billions.There ____3____ be other life! I’m sure of it.