My Reflection on Umbrellaology

For thousands of years, humans have created many stories to understand the universe and explain their place in it. Science was one of the stories. Of course, science is the most rational, logical, and factual of all times.  And above all, it is the story that we cannot imagine our lives without it.

Science is much more than just a story; it is how we think and understand our natural world by using the tools that it provides. Science relies on observations, hypotheses, predictions, and experiments or otherwise known as the scientific method's tools. 

Unlike the other stories, science is a self-correcting machine. Suppose the hypotheses or the experiments disagree with the natural world's observations; those claims may not be considered valid about the universe and should be either ignored or changed. 

 The unique mechanism of skeptically integrating the universe has taken us from looking at the cosmos through the holes of ancient caves, wondering what those shiny dots of light are? To the knowledge that we are made of atoms that came from those same twinkly points in the sky.

Is Umbrellaology a science? I don't think so.

As mentioned earlier, science is the lens through which we see the universe the way nature intended it to be. Umbrellaology, on the other hand, is the study of umbrellas. A human-made item. 

Unlike scientific theories, Umbrellaology has a wide range of vague hypotheses based on a person's limited observations. For example, there is the "Law of Color Variation Relative to Ownership by Sex." which claimes that women tend to use various colored umbrellas while men own mostly black ones; this is neither a natural nor a civil law. 

The claim above is similar to those of Astrology. Your horoscope might say that tomorrow you'll receive some good news! Something extraordinary is awaiting you! Those statements are so general that they can fit most of those who believe that the stars' apparent positions in the sky somehow affect their personal lives. People do receive good news all the time; if they believe in astrology, they'll gladly claim that their horoscope has accurately predicted their day.

In Umbrellaology, one observer has noticed that many, but not all, men carry dark-colored umbrellas and decided to make it a law, or a way of predicting future events. What about those men and women who are using different colored umbrellas? Or those who choose not to use umbrellas at all.

By the way, it would have been much more satisfying if my horoscope can predict in which jacket pocket did I forget a hundred dollar bill from last winter?

Umbrellaology states that, and I quote, "(Umbrellas owned by women tend to great variety of color, whereas those owned by men are almost all black." What happens to the law if we observe men with pink umbrellas and women with black ones? What about children? Are they accounted for in this law? In science, laws do not temporarily suspend themselves to fulfill someone's wishful thinking. Therefore, the claim above is not a law. 

How does Umbrellaology compare to Astronomy?

In Astronomy, a hypothesis is made based on observing the night sky. We can test those claims by designing experiments that either agree or disagrees with them. 

For example, the planet Uranus should have a predictable orbit, just like the rest of our solar system's planets. However, Uranus had a deviation in its orbit. Astronomers began to question whether or not Newton's law of universal gravitation functions at a specific distance from the host star, our sun. A long story short, according to Newton's law, Astronomers predicted the existence of another planet using mathematics, which is governed by their own laws, which can explain Uranus' orbit. Thus, the planet Neptune was discovered. 

In Umbrellaology, these so-called "laws" cannot predict anything. No one can predict what color umbrellas men or women will use, let alone if they're going to carry one at all. 

In the end, I applaud the energy and the passion for pursuing such claims by a person who genuinely believes that this is science. Unfortunately, it is not.

 Umbrellaology does not meet the basic science requirements such as mathematical modeling or experiments. Therefore, it can not be regarded as a science.