Why Should You Care About Science?

The thrust of this chapter is physics, because that's really what a martial artist cares about most. (A typical martial arts class is a veritable physics bonanza!) I titled this section as "science" because I think it is important to discuss why science is important. There is a significant misconception about science from the layperson, and I think that's really too bad. This misconception causes people to automatically assume it is too difficult, or worse, not important. Science can be applied to martial arts quite effectively, and instead of simply knowing how something works, you could know why it works. The only thing that is required is an open mind and a desire to learn something. No Ph.D required.

First, science is not a thing. Science is not a person. Science is neither immoral nor moral. Science doesn't know anything. Science does not prove anything. Science doesn't tell you how to act, or what to do. Science is a process! Specifically, science is the application of the process known as the scientific method. If you completed high school, you know (or knew) what the scientific method is. The unfortunate thing is that most schools generally do not give people the right impression about it (i.e. in school, the experiment is already devised, with the outcomes completely predicted). The entire subject of physics rests on the shoulders of the scientific method. Consider the most powerful tool ever devised by mankind:

1. Observe
2. Hypothesize
3. Predict
4. Experiment

This is the essence of all science. There is nothing to fear here. It is not a difficult process by any means, and there is nothing particularly mysterious going on. This is why when I say that science is not all of those things above, I mean it literally. Scientists are human, and so it is what they make as the result of the science that most people relate to science itself. A scientist may invent a particular weapon or nefarious device, but it's not science that's evil. Science is a tool. That would be like blaming the hammer for driving the nail (as opposed to the guy using the hammer).

Science always starts with making observations of the natural world. You can't invent your own observations or choose some supernatural subject. Science only works when you start with the truth; i.e. a real representation of reality. Martial artists, who live in the real world with everybody else, can take advantage of the power of science as well. You don't have to be studying a comet fragment or enhanced reversed shear plasma confinement for fusion reactors to be conducting science. Instead of trying to explain the scientific method in an abstract fashion, I'll go through a few examples as they relate to martial arts.

Example 1
A martial artist is sparring with a partner. Eventually, the martial artists sees that every once in a while her opponent will raise his left elbow, exposing his ribcage. This is the observation. It is advantageous because when the opponent raises his left elbow, she could land a kick or a punch. After a few minutes of sparring, the martial artist has made enough observations to formulate a hypothesis. She believes that whenever she throws a right roundhouse kick towards her opponent's head, he always raises his left elbow the same way. At this stage, nothing is known for sure, but she can now make predictions with her hypothesis. If she throws a high left roundhouse kick, he will expose his side for attack. The last stage is the experiment. Our martial artist throws a series of roundhouse kicks. Either her predictions will be correct or they won't. If they are, then she will see from her experiment that indeed a right kick towards the head will cause her opponent to expose an opening to his ribcage. Obviously, as a fully cognizant human, her opponent may adapt to her techniques, or just not cooperate by being completely random. Just like any other science, you can't prove that the roundhouse kick will always cause the predicted affect, but the experiment may have shown that nine of every ten times the opponent performs this same flawed defensive move. Our martial artist now has an advantage, because she can make predicative assumptions that give her an opening to attack. Like any good science, she will not stop with one cycle, but continually work through it as she makes more observations. This is vaguely similar to the OODA loop, which was covered in a pervious chapter.

A martial artist is unsatisfied with his side-kick technique for breaking boards. He feels that he is capable of breaking four or more boards at one go, but has never gone above three. The martial artist believes that using more rotation in his hips will give him more power. This is the observation. It is not direct, but the martial artist has observed that other techniques have more power when the hips are rotated, so his hypothesis is that adding more hip rotation will give him more power for the break. The prediction, then, is that if he uses hip rotation he will break four boards, whereas if he did not use hip rotation, he would not be able to break the boards. The experiement would consist of a control, where he tried to break four boards without using any hip rotation. Then, he would try to break four boards with the hip rotation. The outcome of the experiment would either validate his hypothesis or not. He is not free to reject the results of the experiment. If they go against his hypothesis, then either he had to conclude that there was a flaw in the experiment (maybe he really doesn't know how to use hip rotation with a side kick) or that using hip rotation really doesn't matter. The reason for this is because once you break the chain, you have learned nothing (e.g. "Well, I didn't break with hip rotation, but I know I could have. It has to work." This means that nothing was really learned.). By adhering to the experiment's results, the martial artist has gained the knowledge that rotation either does or does not work.

In both examples, the result of the application of the scientific method has given the martial artist an advantage he or she did not have before. In the case of the board breaks, the martial artist, if successful, knows how to break four boards. More importantly, he knows what technique he had to use to perform the break. He can then pass this knowledge on to his students.

Real science works the same way. It always starts when a scientist observes something. Why do objects fall to the ground? What attracts certain rocks to metal? What is electricity? How does concrete break? By applying the scientific method, scientists can gain predictive knowledge about the natural world. This is hugely important. Electricity would not have been possible if people had not tried to formulate predictive hypotheses about how to create and control it. In real science, the experiments and hypotheses can of course be vastly complex, but they are following the same scientific method. When successful enough, a set of hypotheses is formed into a scientific theory. This isn't your everyday definition of the word, for in everyday use theory means a guess or a supposition. A scientific theory is far beyond this simple definition. It is a means of explaining a natural process. Theories are not laws, because science can never prove anything absolutely. If you want proof, you're stuck with logic and math. This doesn't mean that theories are in any way flawed. Some of today's most powerful theories are based on thousands and thousands of observations. Netwon's laws explain the motions of the planets fairly well, but not precisely. It took Einstein's theory of general relativity to predict the motions of the planets more precisely. There is no reason to assume a new theory won't come along and be even more precise than relativity in the future. (Unified quantum gravity theory, anyone?) It doesn't mean that the old theories are wrong, but just a less precise explanation of how the universe works. In order for old theories to be supplanted by news ones, though, the new theory must explain the observations better than the old theory. That's because science is a continual process of learning. Any martial artist should be able to understand that concept very well.

We don't have to be a scientist to take advantage of what science has produced. In our case, we are going to use physics. To apply this knowledge is not science per se, as we are not applying the scientific method. However, it is part of the scientific disciplines, and using physics we can get a better understanding of the forces, vectors, and pressure that makes martial arts work. All of this knowledge is a technology created by our species. You may balk at calling these equations technology, but according to Dictionary.com, technology is:

Indeed, these equations were hard fought by brilliant scientists, who clawed their way to understanding by applying the scientific method, however differently it may have been applied in each century. You could hardly do anything without using technology. If you were to try, and you decided to forsake all electricity and live in a cabin in the mountains, you would still have to give up all your hand tools, your dishes, and even your cloths and eventually, your cabin, to be truly technology free. In fact, you couldn't even use fire. Someone many hundreds of thousands of years ago used something that could be called science to produce the first campfire. Thus, you are already immersed in a literal sea of technology. Ignorance of its existence wouldn't make it any less so. The next sections will covers some of the fundamentals of physics as it relates to martial arts.