Professional Autobiography: A Perspective of the Culture and Practice of Science in the Philippines

Abstract

When I ask my students how they define science, they usually say that it is an "organized body of knowledge." I do not like this definition because it makes science sound so stagnant and like a set of encyclopedia for show. I prefer the definition that highlights science as a process. Science is a rational inquiry into our world (Garcia 2003) and seeks understanding that is derived from a logical structure and that produces mental models to help us represent the world. Because of the logical structure and the mental models, there is a clear effort to make this understanding objective or separate from the persona making the inquiry. Steven Rose (2003) describes this aptly: