THINK LIKE A SCIENTIST

As a Meta-Coach, when you work with a client, do you think like a scientist? If you did, what would that be like? Thomas Kida answers these questions in his book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think (2006). There he identified the six basic mistakes that we commonly make in thinking. A big emphasis in his book is learning how to think like a scientist. To that end he writes about what science is and why it’s important. What is science?

“Science relies heavily on controlled experimentation, since an experiment is one of the best ways to determine if A causes B. ... The hallmark of science is the rigorous testing of hypotheses. ‘Science proposes explanations about the natural world and then puts those hypotheses to repeated tests using experiments, observations, and a creative and diverse array of other methods and strategies.” (p. 71). “Science generally begins with a simple question about something in our world. ... Next we form a hypothesis to specifically address the question. A hypothesis is a testable statement about the relationship between two or more variables.” (p. 72) “Science builds in error-correcting mechanism— criticism— to counteract the prblems of human frailty.” (p. 81).