Chapter 2
Thinking Scientifically: The Scientific Method and Other Ways of Knowing
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting to know the scientific method
Illustrating data with graphs
Measuring the unknown
Considering Indigenous ways of knowing
As you move through the world, you collect information with all your senses — seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling. There are many ways to know about the environment and many ways to observe or collect information about the world around you. Viewing things scientifically, through the lens of the scientific method, is just one way to know about things. And for the purposes of this book, it’s the one I’ll describe in most detail.
If you think of science as lab coats, microscopes, test tubes, pages and pages of data, and wild-haired scientists, you may be a little intimidated by the science part of environmental science. But in actuality, you perform acts of science every day; you just may not know it.
In this chapter, I describe what scientific thinking is, and I explain how scientists look at the world by asking and answering questions in an organized ...
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