Sun Kwok - Our Place in the Universe - II: The Scientific Approach to Discovery

Cover illustration: Abell 2151 cluster of galaxies. Image taken with the MegaCam camera on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Credits: CFHT/Coelum - J.-.C. Cuillandre & G. Anselmi

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This is the second volume of the book Our Place in the Universe. The first volume Understanding Fundamental Astronomy from Ancient Discoveries covers the development of astronomy from ancient times to Newton. The book uses the historical development of astronomy to illustrate the process of rational reasoning and its effect on philosophy, religion, and society. This volume follows this theme and discusses the development of astronomy after Newton, and the parallel evolution of ideas in geology and biology. While the effect of science on technology is well known, the effects of science on how we see ourselves and our world are much less appreciated. The aim of this book is to demonstrate how science motivated intellectual thought and had a major impact on the social development of humans throughout history. Specifically, we use the examples in the development of astronomy to illustrate the process of science, and the effects of evolution in science on our perception of the Universe and on ourselves.

In our educational system, science is often presented to our students as a series of facts. In reality, science is about the process of rational thinking and creativity. What we consider to be the truth is constantly evolving and has certainly changed greatly over the history of humankind. The essence of science is not so much about the current view of our world, but how we changed from one set of views to another. This book is not about the outcome but the process.

As an example, every student knows that the Earth revolves around the Sun. They accept the heliocentric theory as a fact because this was told to them by an authority. However, in my experience, almost no one could cite a single piece of direct evidence for the Earth going around the Sun. As we will see in Chaps. of this book, direct confirmation of the heliocentric theory is not trivial and only came two hundred years after Copernicus. The fact that this is not emphasized in our teaching of science is indeed worrying. We are asking our students to accept certain facts of science without telling them the tortuous process by which we came to that conclusion. The goal of this book is to show how we know.

Science is often presented as logical and the development of science is taught in textbooks as one success after another. The version of scientific development presented is often a sanitized version, where only successes are mentioned. In fact, there have been many (now forgotten) failures and misconceptions that were very popular at the time. When the correct theories came along, they were often resisted, ridiculed, or ignored by the contemporary authorities. If we are unaware of such struggles, we are likely to repeat the same mistakes.

Some may ask: why teach theories that we know to be wrong? The fact is that many of those theories were held up as the truth at the time. Only by tracing the process of discovery can we understand how science works. Students will be able to see current scientific theories in a more critical light and be able to more objectively assess information given to us by the media or authorities today. For scientists, if they are not aware of mistakes made in the past, they may find themselves making similar mistakes in their research now.

This book is based on a course designed for the Common Core Program of the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The HKU Common Core courses are not based on a specific discipline and are designed to help students develop broader perspectives and abilities to critically assess complex issues. I developed this course and taught it from 2010 to 2018. Every year, the class contained about 120 students from all faculties of the university, including architecture, arts, business and economics, dentistry, education, engineering, law, medicine, science, and social sciences. Because of the students diverse background, no mathematical derivations or calculations were used. The students were, however, expected to understand qualitative concepts, develop geometric visualizations, and perform logical deductions.

At the end of each chapter are some discussion topics that can be used in tutorial sessions or be assigned as essay topics. These questions are designed to motivate students to think beyond the class materials and explore implications of the topics covered. Often these questions have no right or wrong answers and are open-ended to encourage creative thinking.

Jargons are great obstacles to learning. In this book, I try to minimize the use of jargons as much as possible and some technical terms are replaced by simple words with similar meaning. Some concepts have precise definitions, and the use of technical terms is unavoidable. All definitions are presented in the Glossary.

For more technical readers, I have added some optional mathematics and physics in this book, with additional materials presented in the Appendices. Non-mathematical readers can skip these parts. To focus on the evolution of concepts, I have deliberately omitted certain details. Readers who wish a more in-depth understanding of certain topics should consult the respective textbooks.

Every year, students ask me whether they will be handicapped by their lack of previous knowledge of physics and astronomy. In fact, the reverse is true. Students in science are told all the modern notions but usually have often never learned how we arrived at those conclusions. In this book, we try to retrace historical steps to find out how we got to these conclusions.