Running Head: CLASS SESSION RESPONSE 1

Class Session Response 1

Delia Pauley

Ivy Tech Community College

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I asked two people what they thought the word science means. First, I asked my

husband. His initial response was that science was the study of life. He went on to say,

Science is the study of something, and a process of how we study. I asked him how he

came to that explanation. He had to think about it for a while and said, Well, Ive spent

30 years working on stuff based on a theory and figuring out if the theory was right or

wrong through trial and error. I have to think that the same process is true for science.

The next person I asked was my daughter, who is a senior in college. Her

explanation was a little more guided with classroom vocabulary. She said, Its

knowledge, information and the process of understanding the natural and physical

world. I asked her how she came to that explanation. She said, ology means study, and

studying is a process. She also said that it didnt hurt that shed had several science

classes over the years and that was what she remembered from class.

In class today I learned that we are all scientists. From the time we are born we

are inquisitive, asking the question why from the time we can talk. We also learn by

trial and error. All of this is part of science, and we engage in it naturally as human

beings. I am currently in Biology 101. We are actually learning about the definition of

science this week. In our text it says that science is a body of knowledge about the

natural world and a collection of unified insights supported by evidence. It also says that

science is the process of learning through the scientific process of observation, question

and hypothesis. It seems like such a heavy explanation for something that is so natural

and part of everyday life, as we talked about today. I like the way my husband explained

a portion of it. He said its the process that he goes through every day at work. He
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comes up with a theory based on some insight that he has, and then by trial and error he

discovers if his theory works. So, after the conversations today, I think that science is the

process of discovery through observation, knowledge and experimentation.

I think the term scientific inquiry must have something to do with the process of

how we ask questions to learn from the world around us. I think the word scientific

represents the process we use in the scientific method. So, scientific inquiry would be a

process of observation, questioning, hypothesis and experimentation as we question the

world around us to gain understanding.

The vocabulary words hypothesis, theory and law may be difficult to separate

from what I am learning in biology right now. That class has definitely impacted my

understanding of these words because its been many years since Ive had to think about

what they mean. Ive recently re-learned that hypothesis is a question that you can test to

prove its validity. Ive also learned that a theory is a set of principles, supported by

evidence that explains something. Im not sure I would have come up with that answer

without that class. I would have said, a theory is an idea about something based on the

information I already have. I think the word law means unmovable, that it is proven to

be true and a rule that should not be broken. I draw that conclusion from the rules of law

in the civilized world, as well as laws that that I remember from past math and science

classes.