Science: What it is and why it matters

By Thom Jonas

All readers will be familiar with science in some form. Most of us enjoy far better health than our distant ancestors, and have the prospect of a longer life, on average. You are reading this on a device only made possible by discoveries from the last 100 years. Through science, humanity has explored the far reaches of space as well as the very strange characteristics of matter at subatomic scales.

But I want to convince you that science is not merely a body of facts. It is not merely something engaged in during the working week by people who studied to become scientists. Perhaps most importantly for this audience, science is not a weapon of mass propaganda wielded by unbelieving apostates intent on robbing your children of a place in God's kingdom. Science is not your enemy. Science is simply a method or process by which we can understand the world and reality. You probably use this method all the time without realising it.