ON BELIEF

At our core of being and decision is a system of our own beliefs; and it’s important for us all to know some of thevarious types. (The following is a bit "tough going". But we need it for later posts!)

History is what historians tell us it is. Their stories are all interesting; but also quite different. So probably some are not too true. We can believe what we hear or read that people say; and we can believe what we perceive ourselves. From both, we form beliefs. Beliefs from hearing and reading, are of two general types:

The first is when the perceived is like a “Revealed Divine”. The second is when the perceived results from following someone's report of following a recipe. From both, there follows many “explainers” who speak and write about what the original perceptions “mean”. For the “Revealed Divine” explainers, meanings expand exponentially large. (e.g., For the Protestant Bible there has arisen some 700+ different types of beliefs based explainers writings and words of a “Divine Revealed” about one who called himself “a son of Man”.

The second type is about “recipe work” and what follows from it. Anyone can repeat a recipe, make perceptions of it, and form beliefs from the perceptions. Those following this procedure, find that all their “good “recipes” have three parts. These are:

1. Make an observation of some thing happening or seen during a recipe, and describe it. (Called making an Observation.)
2. Make a guess, educated or otherwise, about how parts of the observations interact, relate or work together (Called making a Hypothesis.)
3. From the Hypothesis statement, make some prediction for what should follow during a procedure "if the Hypothesis is true", and make a test to see if it is indeed true. (Called Testing).

These steps are called “The Scientific Method”. They are what science “is”. But, in common speech, there are some different meanings of science. One is as a noun and is the collection of all things that have been found to be “most true and useful” by The Scientific Method. These are called theories. Another is as a verb, and means “doing The Scientific Method”. So we have both noun and verb sciences of physics, biology, economics, etc. In their early stages, most sciences are mainly observations, later they begin to contain hypotheses and their testing, and finally become theories. Once a science has matured to have sound and reliable theories, it is ready to be applied and becomes an engineering discipline (some include management, I don’t yet). The engineering stages are still science, but the science is of “how to design", using noun types of sound science theories for a purpose, with safety, economy, reliability, etc., features included in the design as needed!