【正文】 m forbidden. This most likely continues. At every crossway on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Every age has one or more groups of intellectual rebels who are persecuted, condemned, or suppressed at the time。 but to a later age, they seem harmless and often essential to the elevation of human conditions. The enormous success of science has led to the general belief that scientists have developed and ate employing a method a method that is extremely effective in gaining, organizing, and applying new knowledge. Galileo, famous scientist of the 1600s, is usually credited with being the Father of the Scientific Method. His method is essentially as follows: 1. Recognize a problem. 2. Guess an answer. 3. Predict the consequences of the guess. 4. Perform experiments to test predictions. 5. Formulate the simplest theory organizes the three main ingredients: guess, prediction, experimental oute. Although this cookbook method has a certain appeal, to has not been the key to most of the breakthroughs and discoveries in science. Trial and error, experimentation without guessing, accidental discovery, and other methods account for much of the progress in science. Rather than a particular method, the success of science has more to do with an attitude mon to scientists. This attitude is essentially one of inquiry, experimentation, and humility before the facts. If a scientist holds an idea to be true and finds any counterevidence whatever, the idea is either modified or abandoned. In the scientific spirit, the idea must be modified or abandoned in spite of the reputation of the person advocating it. As an example, the greatly respected Greek philosopher Aristotle said that falling bodies fall at a speed proportional to their weight. This false idea was held to be true for more than 2,000 years because of Aristotle39。s immense authority. In the scientific spirit, however, a single verifiable experiment to the contrary outweighs any authority, regardless of reputation or the number of followers and advocates. Scientists must accept facts even when they would like them to be different. They must strive to distinguish between what they see and what they wish to see for humanity39。s capacity for selfdeception is vast. People have traditionally tended to adopt general rules, beliefs, creeds, theories, and ideas without thoroughly questioning their validity and to retain them long after they have been shown to be meaningless, false, or at least questionable. The most widespread assumptions are the least questioned. Most often, when an idea is adopted, particular attention is given to cases that seem to support it, while cases that seem to refute it are distorted, belittled, or ignored. We feel deeply that it is a sign of weakness to change out minds. Competent scientists, however, must be expert at changing their minds. This is because science seeks not to defend our beliefs but to improve them. Better theories are made by those who are not hung up on prevailing ones. Away from their profession, scientists are inherently no more honest or ethical than other people. But in their profession they work in an arena that puts a high premium on honesty. The cardinal rule in science is that all claims must be testable they must be capable, at least in principle, of being proved wrong. For example, if someone claims that a certain procedure has a certain result, it must in principle be possible to perform a procedure that will either confirm or contradict the claim. If confirmed, then the claim is regarded as useful and a steppingstone to further knowledge. None of us has the time or energy or resources to test every claim, so most of the time we must take somebody39。s word. However, we must have some criterion for deciding whether one person39。s word is as good as another39。s and whether one claim is as good as another. The criterion, again, is that the claim must be testable. To reduce the likelihood of error, scientists accept the word only of those whose ideas, theories, and findings are testable if not in practice then at least in principle. Speculations that cannot be tested are regarded as unscientific. This has the longrun effect of pelling honesty findings widely publicized among fellow scientists are generally subjected to further testing. Sooner or later, mistake (and lies) are bound to be found out。 wishful thinking is bound to be exposed. The honesty so important to the progress of science thus bees a matter of selfinterest to scientists.If It Comes Back Charles saw them both at the same time: the small white bird floating from among the park trees and the girl wheeling down the walk. The bird glided downward and rested in the grass。 the girl directed the chair smoothly along the sunlit, shadowy walk. Her collapsible metal chair might have been motorized。 it carried her along so smoothly. She stopped to watch the ducks on the pond and when she shoved the wheels again, Charles sprang to his feet. May I push you? he called, running across the grass to her. The white bird flew to the top of tree. It was mostly he who talked and he seemed afraid to stop for fear she39。d ask him to leave her by herself. Nothing in her face had supported the idea of helplessness conveyed by the wheelchair, and he knew that his assistance was not viewed as a favor. He asked the cause of her handicap。 not because it was so important for him to know, but because it was something to keep the conversation going. It was an automobile accident when I was twelve, Amy explained. I was reading to my younger brother in the back seat and suddenly my mother screamed and tried frantically to miss the truck that had pulled out in front of us. When I woke up in hospital, my mother was screaming again outside the door. This time she was trying to escape the fact that I w