The ideas that have gained scientific acceptance have done so because they are supported by many lines of evidence and have generated many expectations that hold true. Erdmann.ĭespite the fact that they are subject to change, scientific ideas are reliable. But that year, a live coelacanth was discovered off the coast of South Africa, causing scientists to revise their ideas and to investigate how this animal survives in the deep sea.
For example, up until 1938, paleontologists accepted the idea that coelacanths (an ancient fish) went extinct at the time that they last appear in the fossil record - about 80 million years ago.
Ideas that we fully accept today may be rejected or modified in light of new evidence discovered tomorrow. No scientific idea is ever once-and-for-all “proven” Why not? Well, science is constantly seeking new evidence, which could reveal problems with our current understandings. The knowledge that is built by science is always open to question and revision. Either way (so-called “pure” or “applied” research), science aims to increase our understanding of how the natural world works. For example, a chemist might try to produce an antimalarial drug synthetically and, in the process, discover new methods of forming bonds that can be applied to making other chemicals. Along the path to that goal, new knowledge and explanations are constructed. However, increasingly, scientific research is undertaken with the explicit goal of solving a problem or developing a technology. Classically, science’s main goal has been building knowledge and understanding, regardless of its potential applications - for example, investigating the chemical reactions that an organic compound undergoes in order to learn about its structure. Science as a collective institution aims to produce more and more accurate natural explanations of how the natural world works, what its components are, and how the world got to be the way it is now.
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