STORIES AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Humans are a story telling species. Throughout history we have told stories to each other and ourselves as a way to understand and explain the world. Every culture has its creation myth and the stories do not stop there. They were used to discuss every aspect of the world. We humans are chatterboxes who can't resist  telling stories about everything. However compelling and entertaining these stories may be, they fall short of being explanations because they are only stories. For every story there is a variation or a different ending without giving a reason to choose between them. If you are skeptical or try to test their veracity, you will find most such stories wanting. One approach to this has been to forbid skeptical inquiry, branding it as heresy. This idea was so compelling that it was developed by cultures around the world. It is the origin of religion--a set of stories about the world that must be accepted by faith and never questioned.


During the age of reason a new paradigm got started. Instead of forbidding inquiry, some people began to encourage continual questioning. Stories were questioned skeptically and tested with observations and experiments. If the story survives the tests, then provisionally, it can be accepted as something more than a story. It becomes a theory that has real explanatory power. It will never be more than a provisional explanation because we must never let down our skeptical guard. These provisional explanations have become very useful. We call this process of making and vetting stories (theories) the scientific method. Science has taken us a long, long way from the dark ages!