Observations Plus Recipes It has been said that science is the orderly collection of facts about the natural world. Scientists, however, are wary of using the word `fact. ' `Fact' has the feeling of absoluteness and universality, whereas scientific observations are neither ab- lute nor universal. For example, `children have 20 deciduous [baby] teeth' is an observation about the real world, but scientists would not call it a fact. Some children have fewer deciduous teeth, and some have more. Even those children who have exactly 20 deciduous teeth use the full set during only a part of their childhood. When they are babies and t- dlers, children have less than 20 visible teeth, and as they grow older, children begin to loose their deciduous teeth, which are then replaced by permanent teeth. `Children have 20 deciduous [baby] teeth' is not even a complete scientific sta- ment. For one thing, the statement `children have 20 deciduous teeth' does not tell us what we mean by `teeth. ' When we say "teeth," do we mean only those that can seen be with the unaided eye, or do we also include the hidden, unerupted teeth? An observation such as `children have 20 deciduous teeth' is not a fact, and, by itself, it is not acceptable as a scientific statement until its terms are explained: scientifically, `children have 20 deciduous teeth' must be accompanied by definitions and qualifiers.
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