Here are two scenarios. One we would call science; the other we would call pseudoscience. Read the scenarios and decide which is which and why you think so.
Scenario 1: Get a small amount of dirt out of the garden or a nearby park and put it in a jar. Then add water a little at a time and observe what happens. Keep adding water until you have a very watery mix. Observe what happens to the colour and texture of the substance in the jar. What do you think is happening? Make a hypothesis: could you separate out the dirt from the water? Why or why not? If you let all the water evaporate, will you be left with dirt that lookes exactly like it did when you put it in the jar in the first place?
Scenario 2: Go out and find a good, solid forked stick. Go to a park or field and hold the stick firmly by the two fork prongs. This activity is called dowsing, and it is supposed to help you find water. One source has this to say about dowsing:
.. dowsers, using a variety of methods, disagree on why water witching works and even on who can do it. They use different woods and claim to be able to predict different things, such as depth of water or direction of flow.
But one thing they all aglee on - the thing that has been proven by well after well - is that they do locate water. (Mother Earth News Editors)
So now make a prediction: do you think that the divining rod (which is the name for the forked stick) will start vibrating when you are over water?
Which one of those activities seem more like science to you? Why?
The first activity, as it is described, is science. It is an examination of properties of some aspects of the physical world - dirt and water. Ultimately, this activity is a chemistry experiment, though a quite simple one. If you actually did the experiment, and you went and got some dirt and put it in the jar and observed what happened, you were exploring the nature of the particular chemicals that make up the dirt that you found and how those chemicals interact with water -the chemical compound H,O, dihydrogen oxide. Possibly, di
ere you got your water,
there were other chemicals present as well.
You observed the reaction that you created, and you former
sis as to whether it was
possible to separate the dirt back out from the water, and, so, ether the dirt would look exactly the same as it did when you first put it in the jar. From this point, you could test your hypothesis by designing an experiment intended to attempt to separate the two substances.
Notice that if you did not actually run this experiment, if, instead, you only sat in your chair and read about it, you were not doing science. Natural science does not generate knowledge through thought experiments, though thought experiments might help a scientist develop a hypothesis or design an experiment.
From this basic experiment, you could explore a number of other questions related to the interaction of the chemicals in your local dirt and water. You could, for example, determine exactly which chemicals are present inteach sample, and then you could start experimenting to discover whether different combinations of chemicals resulted in the same reaction of dirt and water. You might explore which soil retains water best for growing certain crops, and which soil dries out too quickly, or stays too wet too long. The initial question that we had about the reaction between soil and water not only provides us with information about the physical world, it also opens up many new lines of inquiry. Lest you think that the question about soil is too simple to be useful in the world, you might be interested to know that there is a whole branch of chemistry called soil chemistry. You can use the QR code on the right to explore a website from the Soil Science Society of America and learn more about the wide range of research questions that soil scientists pursue.
In contrast to the soil experiment, the dowsing activity, as it is described, is pseudoscience.
Pseudoscience is an interesting term. Before reading on, think of some activities that you might call pseudoscience or which you have heard others call pseudoscience.
Perhaps you thought of some of these:
﻿﻿astrology
﻿﻿psychic readings or fortune-telling
﻿﻿the search for extraterrestrial life
﻿﻿flat Earth claims
﻿﻿Moon landing conspiracy theories
﻿﻿the belief that ancient astronauts visited the Earth
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, argues that the most objective way to differentiate pseudoscience from science is to test the work against the standard of how testing is done and see whether the findings generate new questions for other scientists to pursue: "That is, does the revolutionary new idea generate any interest on the part of working scientists for adoption in their research programmes, produce any new lines of research, lead to any new discoveries, or influence any existing hypotheses, models, paradigms or worldviews? If not, chances are it is pseudoscience' (Shermer).
We saw, with the example of the dirt and water study, that the findings from such a study could open many new lines of research. On the other hand, the claims of the dowers have not been scientifically established. The article admits that dowers don't know why it works. They don't know which kinds of wood are best and they can't explain why dowsing only works for some people. They just assert that it does work. We can't take that 'finding and extend the research, because there is no evidence that any research took place. We don't know who can find water by dowsing; we don't know if demonstrations of dowsing, assuming some have taken place, were controlled in any way to preclude every possibility of trickery. We don't really know if any water has ever been found using a dowsing stick.
ACTIVITY
We could, of course, decide we wanted to subject dowsing to scientific study.
﻿﻿What hypothesis might you formulate as the basis for your study?
﻿﻿What are some questions you could ask and how could you test your hypotheses?
﻿﻿What would the experiment look like?
﻿﻿Why do you think that scientific studies of this sort have not been carried out by dowsers?
Perspectives
'Pseudoscience' is a bit of an odd term, as it is only applied to activities by people who are not engaged in those activities. Dowsers do not call themselves pseudoscientists;
they call themselves 'dowsers' or 'diviners'. Whether a person calls an activity pseudoscience or not is, therefore, a matter of perspective.
There are two main situations in which people use the term 'pseudoscience':
• Often what some people call pseudoscience is not science at all, and the term is used to express displeasure that the activity is being presented as science, or that it challenges the findings of science. Creationism, for example, is often called pseudoscience, but it would be more precise to say that creationism is not science.
You learned about the methods for making knowledge in religions in Chapter 6.
We will explore the metlAods of science in more detail later in this chapter, but you can already see that the methods of science - which begin with observation of the natural world - are different from the methods of religious knowledge systems.
This difference does not mean that religious knowledge is not knowledge; it is just different from scientific knowledge, and those people who denounce it as pseudoscience are not applying accurate language to describe it.
m Another perspective on the concept of pseudoscience is that 'pseudoscience' is a word that is applied to activities which are in some ways related to science. For example, the dowsing activity above claims to reveal knowledge about the physical properties of the Universe, but does not use the methods of science to develop this knowledge.

The term 'natural science' incorporates a wide range of diff
urs. Since natural science
has, as its focus of study, the physical properties of the nat
se, it has, as its subject,
the physical properties of everything that naturally exists the mi erse. That means that there are sciences which investigate soil (as we saw earlier), animals, plants, air, water, light, planets and stars. There are scientific studies involving the very smallest particles that make up matter
- atoms and sub-atomic particles such as quarks - and the very largest objects in the Universe: galaxies and even other universes. Constructed objects, such as buildings, bridges, artworks, cars and mobile phones are the result of the application of the natural sciences. In some cases, they can also be the focus of scientific inquiry when knowledge is needed to solve problems. We will look at some examples of this later in this section.
The natural sciences can be categorized in broad terms which are probably familiar to you: physics, chemistry, and biology, but within those broad categories you will find many, more focused, subcategories. Table 9.1 shows some of the subcategories you can find under the umbrella of biology, for examiNe:
• Table 9.1 Subcategories of biology
Name of science
Anatomy
Astrobiology
Objects of study
The structure of body parts
Origins and distribution of life in the Universe
Plants
Botany
Cell biology
Entomology
Herpetology
Cells
Insects
Snakes
Physiology
The function of body parts
Plants and animals

The scope of the natural sciences can also be considered from the perspective of how we use the knowledge we get from the work that scientists do. We can see from Table 9.2 that some of the applications of entomology help support the global economy through the development of industries such as the distribution of honey and the sale of silk spun by silkworms (which are the larvae of a moth native to China). The study of insects also contributes to the medical and legal systems by helping people figure out howto stop the spread of disease, cure disease and solve crimes. There are also numerous applications of entomology which affect local and global economies. For instance, a moth from Australia, the Light Brown Apple moth, has spread to a number of countries such as New Zealand, England, Ireland and the United States. It is considered to be a dangerous pest, because in agricultural areas where it has no predators, such as in California, it could spread rapidly and destroy plants ranging from fruit crops to trees such as oaks, redwoods and cypresses (Light Brown Apple Moth'). One important application of entomology, then, is the effort to control and eradicate this pest which could endanger billions of dollars' worth of agriculture.
There are similar applications of the study of plants and other animals. Yellow and Dalmation toadflax are two closely related kinds of weed that were introduced to North America in the nineteenth century through a combination of accidental transport by travellers and deliberate introduction as ornamental plants. They have spread throughout North America, and, because they have no natural predators, these plants have caused significant economic impact to agriculture, as the toadflax plants crowd out crop plants.
Some of the crops which have been affected include grain, oil seed and oil mint, berries and small fruits (Sing, et al) Biologists have studied the problem of these two toadflaxes and have developed methods for eradicating them, the most effective of which involves a biological approach - that is, using other biological entities such as other plants and insects to wipe out the toadflax.
One widespread and common application of biology is the preservation of endangered species.
Biologists studying grizzly bears, for example, have helped in the restoration of the grizzly bear population in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in Wyoming, in the United States. In 1975, there were an estimated 136 bears in the area, but by April 2019, due to legal protections and careful management, there were an estimated 718 bears in the same area (National Park Service). The species was temporarily taken off the endangered species list but was restored in the fall of 2018.
Another mammal conservation effort is underway to try to save North American bats from the spread of White-Nose Syndrome. The syndrome is caused by a fungus and is fatal to bats of several different species. It seems to have arisen in 2006 and has so far killed millions of bats in North America. The fungus, Pseudogymnascus destructans, or Pd for short, has been found in
Areas of knowledge
298
298
299
Europe and Asia too. However, the bats in those regions do not get as sick from the fungus as the North American bats do (White-Nose Syndrome Response Team). As a result, biologists from all over the world are working on the problem.
CAS links
Broadly speaking, Biology deals with the nature of things on the large scale, seeking answers to questions such as, 'What is a plant and how does it work?' and 'What is an animal and how does it work?' Biologists are concerned with plants and animals as systems, and they want to know how these systems work, both in terms of the individual living thing and in terms of how they work in the systems in which they live. Chemistry, on the other hand, deals with the fundamental nature of things in terms of what substances they are made of on the molecular level.
Two main branches of chemistry are organic and inorganic chemistry. The difference between the two is that they deal with different elements on the periodic table of elements.
In April 2018; the international organization Earth Day Network reported the amount of disposable plastics that are used around the world in a year. Some of these figures are shown in Table 9.4.
•I Table 9.4 Quantities of disposable plastic objects used around the world (Source: Earth Day Network March 2018)
Disposable plastic object
Plastic water bottles
Plastic drinking straws
Plastic bags
Quantity used
1000000 per minute
Half a billion every day
4 trillion annually, of which only
1% are returned for recycling
Disposable cups (including
Styrofoam coffee cups)
500 billion a year
Very little of the plastics that is used every year ends up being recycled, and a great deal of it ends up in the oceans. A study published in 2016 by the World Economic Forum found that 32 per cent of 78 million tons of plastic packaging ends up in the ocean every year. To try to help you understand that quantity better, that's the same as pouring one garbage truck fuit of plastic trash into the ocean every minute. That is expected to rise to four trucks per minute by 2050, at which point there e more plastic in the ocean than fish (Penningto
Areas

Make notes out of this text and analyse to 400 words