Science (sahy-uh ns)
1. a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws:
the mathematical sciences.
2. systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.
3. any of the branches of natural or physical science.
4. systematized knowledge in general. (dictionary.com)
Science is a wonderful thing.
I mean think about it. According to townhall.com, in the last fifty years, science has brought us cellphones, artificial hearts, personal computers, satellites, internet, and my personal favorite, caribou coffee.
I am reading a book right now simply called "The Medical Book", which covers the biggest accomplishments of medicine in recorded history. It is amazing how much the various branches of science have contributed to making our lives easier, safer, and healthier. I have taken a botany, environmental biology, and astronomy course, and each course has taught me about the benefits of its respective field.
I learned that a big part of science is classification. Science helps man distinguish:
- moons from planets
- planets from stars
- fruits from vegetables
- epidermis from dermis
- protons from electrons
- composite from simple (flowers)
- monocot from dicot
- mammal from reptile
- vertabrates from invertabrates
- alkali metals from actinides
- echinoderms from mollusks
- sound from force
- electricity from magnetism
- man from woman
We all know gender is based on feelings. So what is wrong with altering what one is to become what one feels like? (I do believe there was a slight contradiction in that sentence.) According to yahoo.com, a man returned his wife's posthumously-given, woman of the year award to publicly display his disapproval of Caitlyn Jenner as a recipient this year. The man's wife had died on 9/11 after bringing hundreds of people to safety. He was insulted that the deeds of his wife would be equated with the deeds of "this man".
You can read the article here: https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/some-jerk-returned-his-wifes-woman-of-the-year-182557863.html
Do please note that, yes, the name "jerk" was inserted in the URL and not the article's title. Sneaky.
Why is everyone in such a hubbub about this? Well, either people are completely supportive of a man who feels like a woman to be called a woman OR people's worlds has been rocked by a sudden lack of concreteness because, well, they just can't accept "facts".
But that's today's science for ya. As previous English major, I am terribly aware of the instability in our world. Literature, anyone? But I do not think gender is an unstable thing. Feelings definitely are. So who do we trust? I mean if inanimate objects had feelings and one of Jupiter's moons wanted to be considered a planet, would we consider it a planet? I mean, hey, sometime even science gets things "wrong". You mean Pluto's NOT a planet? But science, in some cases, is starting to move away from fact and into shaky ground called: theory.
If something is scientifically proven, it is a fact beyond all doubt, right? Then why does the scientific community not own up to its lack of beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt proof in some areas? Was not science supposed to promote curiosity and not slander potential progress made by those whose ideas are not politically correct? So much of today's science has moved from proof to argument.
This is why science scares me. It can prove that I evolved from a monkey, but it can't tell me what gender I am.
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