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How Science Works 



There are many different kinds of scientists but 

 only one kind of science. All scientists are engaged in the 

 same enterprise, the description of natural events in terms 

 of other natural events. The phenomena of day and night 

 are described in terms of the earth's rotation on its own 

 axis, the change of seasons in terms of the earth's move- 

 ment around the sun. The heat of the sun, and therefore 

 the heat of midsummer, is described in terms of the atomic 

 conversions inside the sun. The plants that grow in the 

 summer heat are shown to exist by converting the light of 

 the sun into chemical links between the carbon, hydrogen, 

 and oxygen atoms they absorb from air and water. The ani- 

 mals that eat the plants unlock the energy of these linkages 

 to fuel the engines of their muscular apparatus and develop 

 the electrical events in the nervous system that form the very 

 patterns of thought itself. 



This picture of the universe which has emerged with 

 ever-increasing rapidity during the last five hundred years 

 can be seen as a unity, but it is composed Hke a painting 

 by Pieter Breughel of an almost infinite number of parts. 

 The typical scientist proceeds by looking very intensely 

 at a very small part of the universe. In the beginning he 

 does his best to ignore the big picture since he has learned 

 that if he looks at more than a very few things at once 



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