Science and culture: historical perspectives and contemporary interactions

Science and Culture

According to author Mark Erickson, science is a "multi-faceted object that we can pick up, turn this way and that, peer inside and scrutinize; but science also has its own agency" (Erickson, 2005, 15). His meaning is clear -- science is not one thing all the time. It can take on different aspects, different things for different people. Most of all, it is a fluid process -- one that is a method of inquiry more than simply a discipline. For example, if we take almost any field, the fundamental base is knowledge -- or inquiry; how do we find out things we do not know and what do we do with that information? Without a formal method of inquiry, we are left with less of a process and more of a random search for knowledge. Benjamin Bloom, for one, established as early as the 1950s that the challenge in education was moving beyond mere knowledge, though, and taking that knowledge through a series of tiers: comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Thus, science is that process of moving from rote knowledge -- a one sided, one colored, solid structure -- to synthesis and evaluation -- a multi-sided, transparent, and ever changing object (Bloom, 2006).

Traditionally, of course, science has been more closely defined as a methodology that is quantitative in nature. How many times were we told from elementary school onward that science was a sysematic way of predicting an outcome; and the scientific method a way to use observation and hypothesis to find an empirical way to prove facts? This idea of empiricism, or basing our views on what we can observe, experience, or experiement certainly has validity -- but is that science, or is that simply one additional part of the scientific mode of inquiry? Humans, it seems, have a very unique gift of being able to think about things without actually observing them, or even proving they exist in anything but an idea. So science must be far grander than simply what is observable and testable (Kuhn, 1996, 43-7).

Science, then, is far more than empiricism, far more than testing, far more than hypothesizing. Science is a mode of being, a way of examining both the possible and impossible. Science is not just a discipline ("I do science," or "I am a scientist"). Science, instead, to borrow a famous phrase, a process that allows us to "go where no man has gone before."

Society and Culture

Culture is defined as; a way of life developed and shared by a group of people and passed down from generation to generation. Culture provides us a framework to organize our activity. Thus also allows us to predict the behavior of others. There are different cultural formations; these formations depend on complex elements: language, regional differences, religious beliefs, and political systems. Culture is learned - passed down through parents, peers, and reinforced with positive responses, or discouraged with negative responses. . Humans seem to have an inherent nature to belong -- and therefore strive toward being included in the dominant culture -- a process called acculturation (Middleton, 2010, 4-52).

Culture may be thought of as unique to certain structures. For instance, under Islamic society there is Saudi culture, Bedoin culture, and even Malyasian culture. All have unique and separate customs and identities, but are part of the overall Islamic society. The United States is another example; evolving from the Western European tradition and primarly from Great Britain there is a certain societal aspect of cohesiveness. Yet, there are several cultures within America; mostly defined by religious (Mennonite, Baptist, Evangelical) or ethnic (Latino, Asian, African-American). And, even these have sub-groupings that are similar in overall tone, but not in every specific.