Category: The Story of Science

Mitchell Beazley: 2010.

Gathering evidence

[G]athering evidence and building arguments from what can be seen and reproduced is at the heart of a modern scientist’s work. [41]

Veiled induction: explanations based on evidence

Darwinian evolution is the most robust of scientific theories, but many people find it easier and more reassuring to believe that something so intricately constructed as life on Earth must have had a designer. It is hard for us to accept that erverything around us, from the beautry of the butterfly to the complexity of the human eye, could have evolved simply through chance and the pressure to survive. But the scientific evidence that evolution by natural selection has occurred is unassailable.

The scientific method, which is today practised in all corners of the globe, builds on explanations based on evidence, and when new evidence emerges that does not fit with the model, the explanation must change. That is how science moves on. [15]