The grand aim of science is to figure out how it all works, which includes giant questions
like: Where did the Universe come from?
What is it really made of?
How does all that stuff work and interact with each other?
And how is it that human intelligence exists and is able to experience the Universe and
probe it with our minds?
You know, small stuff like that.
Ever since someone stood underneath a starry sky, looked up and went, ugh?
people have been asking these questions.
We can see forms of science as far back as the ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians, but
the theory of science has its roots in philosophy with the greek philosopher Aristotle being
the first to think about how to actually go about doing science.
This methodology has been refined over the ages and is now called the philosophy of science.
This core of science is the scientific method which contains principles like logic, rationalism,
empiricism, evidence, testable hypotheses, objectivity, and reductionism.
This is the toolkit of science and helps us process the information we get about the universe
to work out what is and isn’t true.
Mathematics and computer science are not technically sciences because they don’t study the natural
world, but they are very close to science and are incredibly useful tools for scientists
to use.
Mathematics is the machinery of physics, and it is kind of a mystery why mathematics describes
the universe so well.
Computers are used in all branches of science because to do science you need a brain, and
computers are an amazing tool to augment our brains.
The core of science is made of physics, chemistry and biology, which contain a load of surrounding
disciplines as well.
I don’t have space to include them all, but I have done in-depth maps of all of these
subjects so check those out if you want to find out more.
If you take a step back and look at all of science it is interesting to see how the scientific
method changes as you apply it to different subjects.
Physics made huge amounts of progress to understand the Universe through reductionism, breaking
things apart into their smallest components and understanding them one by one.
But when you move up the chain towards chemistry and biology, reductionism becomes increasingly
difficult to apply because these subjects deal with much more complex systems.
If you want to study a part of biology, the properties of a single thing are strongly
defined by its relationships with everything else.
You can no longer study individual pieces in isolation.
Because removing them from their relationships actually changes the thing you want to study.
So there are so many complicated relationships in things like how your genes in your DNA
are expressed to make you, or how your neurons and neurochemistry chemistry all combine to
create the unique experience you are having now.
These systems emerge out of a massive number of very complicated relationships and so capturing
all of that complexity in one model is incredibly hard.
In fact as we get further and further up the chain away from physics, the entire scientific
method starts breaking apart.
You can see this in fields like nutrition and psychology where incredibly important
historical results are looking increasingly questionable like eating saturated fat leading
to high cholesterol, or how it is hard to replicate the results of many famous psychology
studies like willpower being a limited resource.
But I think that these mistakes are understandable because trying to come up with a scientific
theory that explains, why people do the things that people do is just a very hard thing to
do because people are… complicated!
And, in fact there is an argument that the human brain is the most complex system that
we know about in the Universe!
And so when you get a load of those to together doing stuff, like in sociology, it just gets,
it just gets crazy.
Which brings us to the social sciences which I have arranged vaguely from more sciency
to less sciency.
These subjects often contain a mixture of scientific practices and practices from the
humanities, like archeology which uses hard science techniques from physics to detect
structures under the ground, or carbon date objects, but then the interpretation of what
this evidence tells us about the humans that lived at that time becomes a lot more subjective.
Or in fields like economics or political science where people can apply rigorous statistical
techniques to their data, but then the interpretation of those has to be done by a human brain who
is by nature subjective.
So the proof that the interpretations are not scientific is the fact that they can’t
predict the future.
So in economics it seems we can’t predict when a recession is going to happen, or what
bitcoin is going to do tomorrow, whereas in physics, if I throw a ball, I can describe
the future of that ball incredibly well.
But please note that I’m not saying that subjectivity is necessarily a bad thing.
If you’re studying a subject matter that has these very complex system in them, and
you have taken the scientific method to its breaking point, what else are you going to
do, subjectivity really is all you have left.
But the trouble comes when it is not recognised or flagged appropriately, people think they
are being objective when they are actually being subjective, and that does happen.
But this is foricing people to innovate with the scientific method and come up with new
techniques to deal with these systems.
One example from history are randomised controlled trials in the pharmaceutical industry to really
tell if a drug is working or not and with the recent replication crisis in the social
science, scientists are now trying to come up with new techniques and methodologies to
deal with these complicated systems.
And it is a very hard challenge, but that’s how you progress.
But if you want to get at the truth of something in the world, the scientific method is still
our best way of doing that.
But now lets carry on our journey and leave the burden of scientific rigour behind us
and move into the arts, a place of pure subjectivity.
Is this good art?
Well I like it.
Okay.
The one thing they do share with science is exploration, pushing the limits of what has
been done or thought before.
They explore the human condition through books, movies, music, art and are always trying to
find new ways of reflecting on what it is to be alive, and a human with emotions and
a brain with the ability to create.
And I think it is just as well we can’t explain all of those things with science because
they would loose all of their charm.
That intangible nature is what makes them so much fun.
Some of the most enduring art has tackled the biggest questions like what is it to be
a human?
Why are we here?
And what should we do with our time here?
These are very similar to where we started and brings us right back to the other side
of philosophy.
So I got a bit carried away this map isn’t really a map of science, it is a map of human
endeavour.
And it isn’t even a map, but a giant cosmic doughnut of knowledge!
Anyway, that’s it.
Thanks for watching, and if you want to get hold of the donut of knowledge, check out
the link in the description below to get a poster.
And if you yourself want to learn some science I’d recommend checking out the sponsor to
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It is a website where you learn a lot of the core concepts in this map, like mathematics,
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And you learn them by answering questions so, in general, when you’re learning a subject
you might feel like you know it but there is only one way to make sure and that is by
actually answering questions to test your knowledge that is using the scientific method
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So that is what you do on brilliant dot org, you learn by answering questions, but they
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So if you have got a youngster in your like who you’d like to get into science at a
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Well that’s it for me, thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you on the next video.