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The Nature Foundation Winter Lecture Series Tackling Science: Is Science Always Right Or Is It Holding Us Back?
January 10, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
by Kathie Driscoll
This year’s Nature Foundation Winter Lecture Series will challenge our beliefs in science. Is science always right or is it holding us back? How many people do you know that don’t believe anything they hear unless it’s been “scientifically proven”? How many people do you know that treat any scientific study as absolute truth? Do you believe that everything printed in a scientific journal to be true?
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena; it will make more progress in one decade than in all previous centuries of its existence.”
Nikola Tesla
On Friday January 10th we will host special guest speaker Dr. James Zimring, Tillack Professor of Experimental Pathology at the University of Virginia. Dr. Zimring pursues basic and translational research in the field of transfusion medicine and blood biology. He has an M.D. and also a Ph.D. in Immunology, has published over 120 research articles in his field of study. Professor Zimring has a superb national and international reputation in the fields of transfusion science and red blood cell research.
Dr. Zimring will begin our lecture series by exploring the basis of scientific practice, methodology, and knowledge – based upon his recent book on the topic What Science is and How it Really Works.
In speaking with Dr Zimring I gleaned from him some of his philosophical ideas about the many different belief systems in our world, of which science is only one. Science has the appearance of a very special system which has led to dazzling technological progress, decade after decade, century after century. Thus, it seems like science has some special ability to understand, predict, and control the natural world. However, science also gets things wrong, and at times, disastrously so. Moreover, the history of science is littered with failed theories, theories once held to be true. Ironically, it is these failed theories that were used to make the stunning technological progress of the past. How do we reconcile this dichotomy and how much confidence should we place in current scientific knowledge claims? What does it mean when scientists claim to “know” something?
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