Original note from: How do you see? UNAM Science Publishing Journal
Author of the note: Martín Bonfil Olivera
Publication date: March 2005
https://www.comoves.unam.mx/numeros/ojodemosca/76
What do you want to know what is its benefit? Another way to ask the same question is: What does scientific activity consist of?
The uses of science, its applications, and its indirect products are multiple (its direct product is undoubtedly knowledge). But it can be said, in general, that science is good for four things: classifying, explaining, predicting, and controlling.
Classification is the first step to understanding. It gives order to what we observe, and allows us to see more deeply. By describing a system and classifying its components, we have discovered relationships that were not visible to the naked eye. Although description, cataloging, enumeration, and arrangement are not central activities of science, they are necessary steps to begin the study of nature. (And in many cases, all that can be done, at least for a while, when dealing with new systems: if we want to detect extraterrestrial life, for example, it will certainly take some time before we get past this first stage.)
The second level is achieved when, in addition to showing what is there, we can also explain it. Here we are faced with what is traditionally considered essential in scientific activity: the generation (and subsequent testing) of hypotheses that make it possible to understand what is being observed: to understand it.
But just as scientific activity does not end with describing and classifying a system, it can also go far beyond simply explaining it. When a scientific study produces a sufficiently detailed description and explanation that allows us to fully understand the system, its structure, and its operation, it becomes possible to predict how it will behave. To do this, more or less elaborate models are created that can range from simple metaphors to mechanical and mathematical models or even very accurate computer simulations. Of course, the effectiveness of these prediction tools is also tested, a process that allows them to be improved.
And if the astonishing potential of science is manifested when it generates knowledge of what has not yet happened, then this capacity is embodied when this knowledge is applied not only to knowing what will happen, but to modify that destiny. Scientific knowledge, when applied, allows us to control the systems under study, changing their behavior. It is here when the activity of doing science, which many conceive of as pure and detached from everyday problems, more clearly acquires a moral responsibility. By modifying nature we can make mistakes and cause damage.
Classification, explanation, prediction, and control: four dimensions that show the power and usefulness of science.
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