Earth Science

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EARTH SCIENCE AND NON SCIENCE

CONCEPT Untuk memahami komposisi dan struktur bumi, one must comprehend the forces that shaped it.Much the same is true of the earth sciences themselves, which originated from attempts to explain the origins of Earth and the materials of which it is composed. Before the modern era, such explanations had roots in religion, mythology, or philosophy and drew from preconceived ideas rather than from observed data. A turning point came with the development of the scientific method, a habit of thinking that spread from astronomy and physics to chemistry and the earth sciences. HOW IT WORKS Aristotle’s Four Causes Though the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384– 322 B.C.) exerted a negative influence on numerous aspects of what became known as the physical sciences (astronomy, physics, chemistry, and the earth sciences), he is still rightly regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of the Western world. Among his contributions to thought was the identification of four causes, or four approaches to the question of how and why something exists as it does. In Aristotle’s system, which developed from ideas of causation put forward by his predecessors, the most basic of explanations is the material cause, or the substance of which a thing is made. In a house, for instance, the wood and other building materials would be the material cause. The builders themselves are the efficient cause, or the forces that shaped the house. More complex than these is a third variety of causeeffect relationship, the formal cause—that is, the design or blueprint on which something is modeled. The first three Aristotelian causes provide a pathway for explaining how; the fourth and last cause approaches the

much more challenging question of why. This is the final cause, or the reason why a thing exists at all—in other words, the purpose for which it was made. Even in the case of the house, this is a somewhat complicated matter. A house exists, of course, to provide a dwelling for its occupants, but general contractors would not initiate the building process if they did not expect to make a profit, nor would the subcontractors and laborers continue to work on it if they did not earn an income from the project. Religion, Science, and Earth The matter of final cause is almost unimaginably more complex when applied to Earth rather than to a house. The question “Why does Earth exist?” or “What is the ultimate reason for Earth’s existence?” is not really a topic for science at all, but rather for theology and philosophy. Nor do the answers provided by religion and philosophical beliefs qualify as answers in the same sense that workable scientific theories do. There has always been a degree of tension between religion and the sciences, and nowhere has this been more apparent than in the earth sciences. As will be discussed later in this essay, most early theories concerning Earth’s structure and development were religious in origin, and even some modern explanations have theological roots. Certainly there is nothing wrong

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