Science word and its meaning

Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.^[1][2]

The earliest written records of identifiable predecessors to modern science come from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia from around 3000 to 1200 BCE. Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and medicine entered and shaped the Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes.^{[3]: 12 [4]} After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries (400 to 1000 CE) of the Middle Ages, but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age^[5] and later by the efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek manuscripts from the dying Byzantine Empire to Western Europe in the Renaissance.

The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived «natural philosophy»,^[6][7] which was later transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century^[8] as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions.^[9][10] The scientific method soon played a greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to take shape,^[11][12] along with the changing of «natural philosophy» to «natural science».^[13]

Modern science is typically divided into three major branches:^[14] natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies;^[15][16] and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules.^[17][18] There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines,^[19][20][21] because they do not rely on empirical evidence.^[22][20] Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine.^[23][24][25]

New knowledge in science is advanced by research from scientists who are motivated by curiosity about the world and a desire to solve problems.^[26][27] Contemporary scientific research is highly collaborative and is usually done by teams in academic and research institutions,^[28] government agencies, and companies.^[29][30] The practical impact of their work has led to the emergence of science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritizing the ethical and moral development of commercial products, armaments, health care, public infrastructure, and environmental protection.

Etymology

The word science has been used in Middle English since the 14th century in the sense of «the state of knowing». The word was borrowed from the Anglo-Norman language as the suffix -cience, which was borrowed from the Latin word scientia, meaning «knowledge, awareness, understanding». It is a noun derivative of the Latin sciens meaning «knowing», and undisputedly derived from the Latin sciō, the present participle scīre, meaning «to know».^[31]

There are many hypotheses for science‘s ultimate word origin. According to Michiel de Vaan, Dutch linguist and Indo-Europeanist, sciō may have its origin in the Proto-Italic language as *skije- or *skijo- meaning «to know», which may originate from Proto-Indo-European language as *skh₁-ie, *skh₁-io, meaning «to incise». The Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben proposed sciō is a back-formation of nescīre, meaning «to not know, be unfamiliar with», which may derive from Proto-Indo-European *sekH- in Latin secāre, or *skh₂—, from *sḱʰeh2(i)- meaning «to cut».^[32]

In the past, science was a synonym for «knowledge» or «study», in keeping with its Latin origin. A person who conducted scientific research was called a «natural philosopher» or «man of science».^[33] In 1834, William Whewell introduced the term scientist in a review of Mary Somerville’s book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences,^[34] crediting it to «some ingenious gentleman» (possibly himself).^[35]

History

Early history

Science has no single origin. Rather, systematic methods emerged gradually over the course of tens of thousands of years,^[36][37] taking different forms around the world, and few details are known about the very earliest developments. Women likely played a central role in prehistoric science,^[38] as did religious rituals.^[39] Some scholars use the term «protoscience» to label activities in the past that resemble modern science in some but not all features;^[40][41][42] however, this label has also been criticized as denigrating^[43] or too suggestive of presentism, thinking about those activities only in relation to modern categories.^[44]

Direct evidence for scientific processes becomes clearer with the advent of writing systems in early civilizations like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, creating the earliest written records in the history of science in around 3000 to 1200 BCE.^{[3]: 12–15 [4]} Although the words and concepts of «science» and «nature» were not part of the conceptual landscape at the time, the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians made contributions that would later find a place in Greek and medieval science: mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.^{[45][3]: 12} From the 3rd millennium BCE, the ancient Egyptians developed a decimal numbering system,^[46] solved practical problems using geometry,^[47] and developed a calendar.^[48] Their healing therapies involved drug treatments and the supernatural, such as prayers, incantations, and rituals.^[3]: 9

The ancient Mesopotamians used knowledge about the properties of various natural chemicals for manufacturing pottery, faience, glass, soap, metals, lime plaster, and waterproofing.^[49] They studied animal physiology, anatomy, behavior, and astrology for divinatory purposes.^[50] The Mesopotamians had an intense interest in medicine^[49] and the earliest medical prescriptions appeared in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur.^[51] They seem to study scientific subjects which have practical or religious applications and have little interest of satisfying curiosity.^[49]

Classical antiquity

In classical antiquity, there is no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, well-educated, usually upper-class, and almost universally male individuals performed various investigations into nature whenever they could afford the time.^[52] Before the invention or discovery of the concept of phusis or nature by the pre-Socratic philosophers, the same words tend to be used to describe the natural «way» in which a plant grows,^[53] and the «way» in which, for example, one tribe worships a particular god. For this reason, it is claimed that these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and the first to clearly distinguish «nature» and «convention».^[54]

The early Greek philosophers of the Milesian school, which was founded by Thales of Miletus and later continued by his successors Anaximander and Anaximenes, were the first to attempt to explain natural phenomena without relying on the supernatural.^[55] The Pythagoreans developed a complex number philosophy^{[56]: 467–68} and contributed significantly to the development of mathematical science.^[56]: 465 The theory of atoms was developed by the Greek philosopher Leucippus and his student Democritus.^[57][58] Later, Epicurus would develop a full natural cosmology based on atomism, and would adopt a «canon» (ruler, standard) which established physical criteria or standards of scientific truth.^[59] The Greek doctor Hippocrates established the tradition of systematic medical science^[60][61] and is known as «The Father of Medicine».^[62]

A turning point in the history of early philosophical science was Socrates’ example of applying philosophy to the study of human matters, including human nature, the nature of political communities, and human knowledge itself. The Socratic method as documented by Plato’s dialogues is a dialectic method of hypothesis elimination: better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general commonly-held truths that shape beliefs and scrutinizes them for consistency.^[63] Socrates criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism.^[64]

Aristotle in the 4th century BCE created a systematic program of teleological philosophy.^[65] In the 3rd century BCE, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the universe, with the Sun at the center and all the planets orbiting it.^[66] Aristarchus’s model was widely rejected because it was believed to violate the laws of physics,^[66] while Ptolemy’s Almagest, which contains a geocentric description of the Solar System, was accepted through the early Renaissance instead.^[67][68] The inventor and mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse made major contributions to the beginnings of calculus.^[69] Pliny the Elder was a Roman writer and polymath, who wrote the seminal encyclopedia Natural History.^[70][71][72]

Positional notation for representing numbers likely emerged between the 3rd and 5th centuries CE along Indian trade routes. This numeral system made efficient arithmetic operations more accessible and would eventually become standard for mathematics worldwide.^[73]

Middle Ages

Due to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the 5th century saw an intellectual decline and knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe.^[3]: 194 During the period, Latin encyclopedists such as Isidore of Seville preserved the majority of general ancient knowledge.^[74] In contrast, because the Byzantine Empire resisted attacks from invaders, they were able to preserve and improve prior learning.^[3]: 159 John Philoponus, a Byzantine scholar in the 500s, started to question Aristotle’s teaching of physics, introducing the theory of impetus.^{[3]: 307, 311, 363, 402} His criticism served as an inspiration to medieval scholars and Galileo Galilei, who extensively cited his works ten centuries later.^{[3]: 307–308 [75]}

During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, natural phenomena were mainly examined via the Aristotelian approach. The approach includes Aristotle’s four causes: material, formal, moving, and final cause.^[76] Many Greek classical texts were preserved by the Byzantine empire and Arabic translations were done by groups such as the Nestorians and the Monophysites. Under the Caliphate, these Arabic translations were later improved and developed by Arabic scientists.^[77] By the 6th and 7th centuries, the neighboring Sassanid Empire established the medical Academy of Gondeshapur, which is considered by Greek, Syriac, and Persian physicians as the most important medical center of the ancient world.^[78]

The House of Wisdom was established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq,^[79] where the Islamic study of Aristotelianism flourished^[80] until the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Ibn al-Haytham, better known as Alhazen, began experimenting as a means to gain knowledge^[81][82] and disproved Ptolemy’s theory of vision^{[83]: Book I, [6.54]. p. 372} Avicenna’s compilation of the Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia, is considered to be one of the most important publications in medicine and was used until the 18th century.^[84]

By the eleventh century, most of Europe had become Christian,^[3]: 204 and in 1088, the University of Bologna emerged as the first university in Europe.^[85] As such, demand for Latin translation of ancient and scientific texts grew,^[3]: 204 a major contributor to the Renaissance of the 12th century. Renaissance scholasticism in western Europe flourished, with experiments done by observing, describing, and classifying subjects in nature.^[86] In the 13rd century, medical teachers and students at Bologna began opening human bodies, leading to the first anatomy textbook based on human dissection by Mondino de Luzzi.^[87]

Renaissance

New developments in optics played a role in the inception of the Renaissance, both by challenging long-held metaphysical ideas on perception, as well as by contributing to the improvement and development of technology such as the camera obscura and the telescope. At the start of the Renaissance, Roger Bacon, Vitello, and John Peckham each built up a scholastic ontology upon a causal chain beginning with sensation, perception, and finally apperception of the individual and universal forms of Aristotle.^{[83]: Book I} A model of vision later known as perspectivism was exploited and studied by the artists of the Renaissance. This theory uses only three of Aristotle’s four causes: formal, material, and final.^[88]

In the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus formulated a heliocentric model of the Solar System, stating that the planets revolve around the Sun, instead of the geocentric model where the planets and the Sun revolve around the Earth. This was based on a theorem that the orbital periods of the planets are longer as their orbs are farther from the center of motion, which he found not to agree with Ptolemy’s model.^[89]

Johannes Kepler and others challenged the notion that the only function of the eye is perception, and shifted the main focus in optics from the eye to the propagation of light.^[88][90] Kepler is best known, however, for improving Copernicus’ heliocentric model through the discovery of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Kepler did not reject Aristotelian metaphysics and described his work as a search for the Harmony of the Spheres.^[91] Galileo had made significant contributions to astronomy, physics and engineering. However, he became persecuted after Pope Urban VIII sentenced him for writing about the heliocentric model.^[92]

The printing press was widely used to publish scholarly arguments, including some that disagreed widely with contemporary ideas of nature.^[93] Francis Bacon and René Descartes published philosophical arguments in favor of a new type of non-Aristotelian science. Bacon emphasized the importance of experiment over contemplation, questioned the Aristotelian concepts of formal and final cause, promoted the idea that science should study the laws of nature and the improvement of all human life.^[94] Descartes emphasized individual thought and argued that mathematics rather than geometry should be used to study nature.^[95]

Age of Enlightenment

At the start of the Age of Enlightenment, Isaac Newton formed the foundation of classical mechanics by his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, greatly influencing future physicists.^[96] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz incorporated terms from Aristotelian physics, now used in a new non-teleological way. This implied a shift in the view of objects: objects were now considered as having no innate goals. Leibniz assumed that different types of things all work according to the same general laws of nature, with no special formal or final causes.^[97]

During this time, the declared purpose and value of science became producing wealth and inventions that would improve human lives, in the materialistic sense of having more food, clothing, and other things. In Bacon’s words, «the real and legitimate goal of sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches«, and he discouraged scientists from pursuing intangible philosophical or spiritual ideas, which he believed contributed little to human happiness beyond «the fume of subtle, sublime or pleasing [speculation]».^[98]

Science during the Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies^[99] and academies, which had largely replaced universities as centers of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were the backbones of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularization of science among an increasingly literate population.^[100] Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors – Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally – as the guides to every physical and social field of the day.^[101]

The 18th century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine^[102] and physics;^[103] the development of biological taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus;^[104] a new understanding of magnetism and electricity;^[105] and the maturation of chemistry as a discipline.^[106] Ideas on human nature, society, and economics evolved during the Enlightenment. Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed A Treatise of Human Nature, which was expressed historically in works by authors including James Burnett, Adam Ferguson, John Millar and William Robertson, all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behaved in ancient and primitive cultures with a strong awareness of the determining forces of modernity.^[107] Modern sociology largely originated from this movement.^[108] In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, which is often considered the first work on modern economics.^[109]

19th century

During the nineteenth century, many distinguishing characteristics of contemporary modern science began to take shape. These included the transformation of the life and physical sciences, frequent use of precision instruments, emergence of terms such as «biologist», «physicist», «scientist», increased professionalization of those studying nature, scientists gained cultural authority over many dimensions of society, industrialization of numerous countries, thriving of popular science writings and emergence of science journals.^[110] During the late 19th century, psychology emerged as a separate discipline from philosophy when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory for psychological research in 1879.^[111]

During the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858, which explained how different plants and animals originated and evolved. Their theory was set out in detail in Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859.^[112] Separately, Gregor Mendel presented his paper, «Experiments on Plant Hybridization» in 1865,^[113] which outlined the principles of biological inheritance, serving as the basis for modern genetics.^[114]

Early in the 19th century, John Dalton suggested the modern atomic theory, based on Democritus’s original idea of indivisible particles called atoms.^[115] The laws of conservation of energy, conservation of momentum and conservation of mass suggested a highly stable universe where there could be little loss of resources. However, with the advent of the steam engine and the industrial revolution there was an increased understanding that not all forms of energy have the same energy qualities, the ease of conversion to useful work or to another form of energy.^[116] This realization led to the development of the laws of thermodynamics, in which the free energy of the universe is seen as constantly declining: the entropy of a closed universe increases over time.^[a]

The electromagnetic theory was established in the 19th century by the works of Hans Christian Ørsted, André-Marie Ampère, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Oliver Heaviside, and Heinrich Hertz. The new theory raised questions that could not easily be answered using Newton’s framework. The discovery of X-rays inspired the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie in 1896,^[119] Marie Curie then became the first person to win two Nobel prizes.^[120] In the next year came the discovery of the first subatomic particle, the electron.^[121]

20th century

In the first half of the century, the development of antibiotics and artificial fertilizers improved human living standards globally.^[122][123] Harmful environmental issues such as ozone depletion, ocean acidification, eutrophication and climate change came to the public’s attention and caused the onset of environmental studies.^[124]

During this period, scientific experimentation became increasingly larger in scale and funding.^[125] The extensive technological innovation stimulated by World War I, World War II, and the Cold War led to competitions between global powers, such as the Space Race^[126] and nuclear arms race.^[127] Substantial international collaborations were also made, despite armed conflicts.^[128]

In the late 20th century, active recruitment of women and elimination of sex discrimination greatly increased the number of women scientists, but large gender disparities remained in some fields.^[129] The discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1964^[130] led to a rejection of the steady-state model of the universe in favor of the Big Bang theory of Georges Lemaître.^[131]

The century saw fundamental changes within science disciplines. Evolution became a unified theory in the early 20th-century when the modern synthesis reconciled Darwinian evolution with classical genetics.^[132] Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics complement classical mechanics to describe physics in extreme length, time and gravity.^[133][134] Widespread use of integrated circuits in the last quarter of the 20th century combined with communications satellites led to a revolution in information technology and the rise of the global internet and mobile computing, including smartphones. The need for mass systematization of long, intertwined causal chains and large amounts of data led to the rise of the fields of systems theory and computer-assisted scientific modeling.^[135]

21st century

The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 by identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome.^[136] The first induced pluripotent human stem cells were made in 2006, allowing adult cells to be transformed into stem cells and turn to any cell type found in the body.^[137] With the affirmation of the Higgs boson discovery in 2013, the last particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics was found.^[138] In 2015, gravitational waves, predicted by general relativity a century before, were first observed.^[139][140] In 2019, the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope presented the first direct image of a black hole’s accretion disk.^[141]

Branches

Modern science is commonly divided into three major branches: natural science, social science, and formal science.^[14] Each of these branches comprises various specialized yet overlapping scientific disciplines that often possess their own nomenclature and expertise.^[142] Both natural and social sciences are empirical sciences,^[143] as their knowledge is based on empirical observations and is capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions.^[144]

Natural science

Natural science is the study of the physical world. It can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science. These two branches may be further divided into more specialized disciplines. For example, physical science can be subdivided into physics, chemistry, astronomy, and earth science. Modern natural science is the successor to the natural philosophy that began in Ancient Greece. Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, remain necessary in natural science.^[145] Systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on.^[146] Today, «natural history» suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences.^[147]

Social science is the study of human behavior and functioning of societies.^[15][16] It has many disciplines that include, but are not limited to anthropology, economics, history, human geography, political science, psychology, and sociology.^[15] In the social sciences, there are many competing theoretical perspectives, many of which are extended through competing research programs such as the functionalists, conflict theorists, and interactionists in sociology.^[15] Due to the limitations of conducting controlled experiments involving large groups of individuals or complex situations, social scientists may adopt other research methods such as the historical method, case studies, and cross-cultural studies. Moreover, if quantitative information is available, social scientists may rely on statistical approaches to better understand social relationships and processes.^[15]

Formal science

Formal science is an area of study that generates knowledge using formal systems.^{[148][17][18]} A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules.^[149] It includes mathematics,^[150][151] systems theory, and theoretical computer science. The formal sciences share similarities with the other two branches by relying on objective, careful, and systematic study of an area of knowledge. They are, however, different from the empirical sciences as they rely exclusively on deductive reasoning, without the need for empirical evidence, to verify their abstract concepts.^{[22][152][144]} The formal sciences are therefore a priori disciplines and because of this, there is disagreement on whether they constitute a science.^[19][153] Nevertheless, the formal sciences play an important role in the empirical sciences. Calculus, for example, was initially invented to understand motion in physics.^[154] Natural and social sciences that rely heavily on mathematical applications include mathematical physics,^[155] chemistry,^[156] biology,^[157] finance,^[158] and economics.^[159]

Applied science

Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge to attain practical goals and includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine.^[160][25] Engineering is the use of scientific principles to invent, design and build machines, structures and technologies.^[161] Science may contribute to the development of new technologies.^[162] Medicine is the practice of caring for patients by maintaining and restoring health through the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of injury or disease.^[163][164] The applied sciences are often contrasted with the basic sciences, which are focused on advancing scientific theories and laws that explain and predict events in the natural world.^[165][166]

Computational science applies computing power to simulate real-world situations, enabling a better understanding of scientific problems than formal mathematics alone can achieve. The use of machine learning and artificial intelligence is becoming a central feature of computational contributions to science for example in agent-based computational economics, random forests, topic modeling and various forms of prediction. However, machines alone rarely advance knowledge as they require human guidance and capacity to reason; and they can introduce bias against certain social groups or sometimes underperform against humans.^[167][168]

Interdisciplinary science

Interdisciplinary science involves the combination of two or more disciplines into one,^[169] such as bioinformatics, a combination of biology and computer science^[170] or cognitive sciences. The concept has existed since the ancient Greek and it became popular again in the 20th century.^[171]

Scientific research

Scientific research can be labeled as either basic or applied research. Basic research is the search for knowledge and applied research is the search for solutions to practical problems using this knowledge. Most understanding comes from basic research, though sometimes applied research targets specific practical problems. This leads to technological advances that were not previously imaginable.^[172]

Scientific method

Scientific research involves using the scientific method, which seeks to objectively explain the events of nature in a reproducible way.^[173] Scientists usually take for granted a set of basic assumptions that are needed to justify the scientific method: there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers; this objective reality is governed by natural laws; these laws were discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.^[2] Mathematics is essential in the formation of hypotheses, theories, and laws, because it is used extensively in quantitative modeling, observing, and collecting measurements.^[174] Statistics is used to summarize and analyze data, which allows scientists to assess the reliability of experimental results.^[175]

In the scientific method, an explanatory thought experiment or hypothesis is put forward as an explanation using parsimony principles and is expected to seek consilience – fitting with other accepted facts related to an observation or scientific question.^[176] This tentative explanation is used to make falsifiable predictions, which are typically posted before being tested by experimentation. Disproof of a prediction is evidence of progress.^{[173]: 4–5 [177]} Experimentation is especially important in science to help establish causal relationships to avoid the correlation fallacy, though in some sciences such as astronomy or geology, a predicted observation might be more appropriate.^[178]

When a hypothesis proves unsatisfactory, it is modified or discarded.^[179] If the hypothesis survived testing, it may become adopted into the framework of a scientific theory, a logically reasoned, self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of certain natural events. A theory typically describes the behavior of much broader sets of observations than a hypothesis; commonly, a large number of hypotheses can be logically bound together by a single theory. Thus a theory is a hypothesis explaining various other hypotheses. In that vein, theories are formulated according to most of the same scientific principles as hypotheses. Scientists may generate a model, an attempt to describe or depict an observation in terms of a logical, physical or mathematical representation and to generate new hypotheses that can be tested by experimentation.^[180]

While performing experiments to test hypotheses, scientists may have a preference for one outcome over another.^[181][182] Eliminating the bias can be achieved by transparency, careful experimental design, and a thorough peer review process of the experimental results and conclusions.^[183][184] After the results of an experiment are announced or published, it is normal practice for independent researchers to double-check how the research was performed, and to follow up by performing similar experiments to determine how dependable the results might be.^[185] Taken in its entirety, the scientific method allows for highly creative problem solving while minimizing the effects of subjective and confirmation bias.^[186] Intersubjective verifiability, the ability to reach a consensus and reproduce results, is fundamental to the creation of all scientific knowledge.^[187]

Scientific literature

Scientific research is published in a range of literature.^[188] Scientific journals communicate and document the results of research carried out in universities and various other research institutions, serving as an archival record of science. The first scientific journals, Journal des sçavans followed by Philosophical Transactions, began publication in 1665. Since that time the total number of active periodicals has steadily increased. In 1981, one estimate for the number of scientific and technical journals in publication was 11,500.^[189]

Most scientific journals cover a single scientific field and publish the research within that field; the research is normally expressed in the form of a scientific paper. Science has become so pervasive in modern societies that it is considered necessary to communicate the achievements, news, and ambitions of scientists to a wider population.^[190]

Challenges

The replication crisis is an ongoing methodological crisis that affects parts of the social and life sciences. In subsequent investigations, the results of many scientific studies are proven to be unrepeatable.^[191] The crisis has long-standing roots; the phrase was coined in the early 2010s^[192] as part of a growing awareness of the problem. The replication crisis represents an important body of research in metascience, which aims to improve the quality of all scientific research while reducing waste.^[193]

An area of study or speculation that masquerades as science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy that it would not otherwise be able to achieve is sometimes referred to as pseudoscience, fringe science, or junk science.^[194][195] Physicist Richard Feynman coined the term «cargo cult science» for cases in which researchers believe and at a glance looks like they are doing science, but lack the honesty allowing their results to be rigorously evaluated.^[196] Various types of commercial advertising, ranging from hype to fraud, may fall into these categories. Science has been described as «the most important tool» for separating valid claims from invalid ones.^[197]

There can also be an element of political or ideological bias on all sides of scientific debates. Sometimes, research may be characterized as «bad science,» research that may be well-intended but is incorrect, obsolete, incomplete, or over-simplified expositions of scientific ideas. The term «scientific misconduct» refers to situations such as where researchers have intentionally misrepresented their published data or have purposely given credit for a discovery to the wrong person.^[198]

Philosophy of science

There are different schools of thought in the philosophy of science. The most popular position is empiricism, which holds that knowledge is created by a process involving observation; scientific theories generalize observations.^[199] Empiricism generally encompasses inductivism, a position that explains how general theories can be made from the finite amount of empirical evidence available. Many versions of empiricism exist, with the predominant ones being Bayesianism^[200] and the hypothetico-deductive method.^[199]

Empiricism has stood in contrast to rationalism, the position originally associated with Descartes, which holds that knowledge is created by the human intellect, not by observation.^[201] Critical rationalism is a contrasting 20th-century approach to science, first defined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rejected the way that empiricism describes the connection between theory and observation. He claimed that theories are not generated by observation, but that observation is made in the light of theories: that the only way theory A can be affected by observation is after theory A were to conflict with observation, but theory B were to survive the observation.^[202]
Popper proposed replacing verifiability with falsifiability as the landmark of scientific theories, replacing induction with falsification as the empirical method.^[202] Popper further claimed that there is actually only one universal method, not specific to science: the negative method of criticism, trial and error,^[203] covering all products of the human mind, including science, mathematics, philosophy, and art.^[204]

Another approach, instrumentalism, emphasizes the utility of theories as instruments for explaining and predicting phenomena. It views scientific theories as black boxes with only their input (initial conditions) and output (predictions) being relevant. Consequences, theoretical entities, and logical structure are claimed to be something that should be ignored.^[205] Close to instrumentalism is constructive empiricism, according to which the main criterion for the success of a scientific theory is whether what it says about observable entities is true.^[206]

Thomas Kuhn argued that the process of observation and evaluation takes place within a paradigm, a logically consistent «portrait» of the world that is consistent with observations made from its framing. He characterized normal science as the process of observation and «puzzle solving» which takes place within a paradigm, whereas revolutionary science occurs when one paradigm overtakes another in a paradigm shift.^[207] Each paradigm has its own distinct questions, aims, and interpretations. The choice between paradigms involves setting two or more «portraits» against the world and deciding which likeness is most promising. A paradigm shift occurs when a significant number of observational anomalies arise in the old paradigm and a new paradigm makes sense of them. That is, the choice of a new paradigm is based on observations, even though those observations are made against the background of the old paradigm. For Kuhn, acceptance or rejection of a paradigm is a social process as much as a logical process. Kuhn’s position, however, is not one of relativism.^[208]

Finally, another approach often cited in debates of scientific skepticism against controversial movements like «creation science» is methodological naturalism. Naturalists maintain that a difference should be made between natural and supernatural, and science should be restricted to natural explanations.^[209] Methodological naturalism maintains that science requires strict adherence to empirical study and independent verification.^[210]

The scientific community is a network of interacting scientists who conducts scientific research. The community consists of smaller groups working in scientific fields. By having peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, scientists maintain the quality of research methodology and objectivity when interpreting results.^[211]

Scientists

Scientists are individuals who conduct scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of interest.^[212][213] In modern times, many professional scientists are trained in an academic setting and upon completion, attain an academic degree, with the highest degree being a doctorate such as a Doctor of Philosophy or PhD.^[214] Many scientists pursue careers in various sectors of the economy such as academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations.^{[215][216][217]}

Scientists exhibit a strong curiosity about reality and a desire to apply scientific knowledge for the benefit of health, nations, the environment, or industries. Other motivations include recognition by their peers and prestige. In modern times, many scientists have advanced degrees^[218] in an area of science and pursue careers in various sectors of the economy such as academia, industry, government, and nonprofit environments.^[219][220]

Science has historically been a male-dominated field, with notable exceptions. Women in science faced considerable discrimination in science, much as they did in other areas of male-dominated societies. For example, women were frequently being passed over for job opportunities and denied credit for their work.^[221] The achievements of women in science have been attributed to the defiance of their traditional role as laborers within the domestic sphere.^[222] Lifestyle choice plays a major role in female engagement in science; female graduate students’ interest in careers in research declines dramatically throughout graduate school, whereas that of their male colleagues remains unchanged.^[223]

Learned societies

Learned societies for the communication and promotion of scientific thought and experimentation have existed since the Renaissance.^[224] Many scientists belong to a learned society that promotes their respective scientific discipline, profession, or group of related disciplines.^[225] Membership may either be open to all, require possession of scientific credentials, or conferred by election.^[226] Most scientific societies are non-profit organizations,^[227] and many are professional associations. Their activities typically include holding regular conferences for the presentation and discussion of new research results and publishing or sponsoring academic journals in their discipline. Some societies act as professional bodies, regulating the activities of their members in the public interest or the collective interest of the membership.^{[citation needed]}

The professionalization of science, begun in the 19th century, was partly enabled by the creation of national distinguished academies of sciences such as the Italian Accademia dei Lincei in 1603,^[228] the British Royal Society in 1660,^[229] the French Academy of Sciences in 1666,^[230] the American National Academy of Sciences in 1863,^[231] the German Kaiser Wilhelm Society in 1911,^[232] and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1949.^[233] International scientific organizations, such as the International Science Council, are devoted to international cooperation for science advancement.^[234]

Awards

Science awards are usually given to individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to a discipline. They are often given by prestigious institutions, thus it is considered a great honor for a scientist receiving them. Since the early Renaissance, scientists are often awarded medals, money, and titles. The Nobel Prize, a widely regarded prestigious award, is awarded annually to those who have achieved scientific advances in the fields of medicine, physics, and chemistry.^[235]

Society

Funding and policies

Scientific research is often funded through a competitive process in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding. Such processes, which are run by government, corporations, or foundations, allocate scarce funds. Total research funding in most developed countries is between 1.5% and 3% of GDP.^[236] In the OECD, around two-thirds of research and development in scientific and technical fields is carried out by industry, and 20% and 10% respectively by universities and government. The government funding proportion in certain fields is higher, and it dominates research in social science and humanities. In the lesser-developed nations, government provides the bulk of the funds for their basic scientific research.^[237]

Many governments have dedicated agencies to support scientific research, such as the National Science Foundation in the United States,^[238] the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina,^[239] Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia,^[240] National Centre for Scientific Research in France,^[241] the Max Planck Society in Germany,^[242] and National Research Council in Spain.^[243] In commercial research and development, all but the most research-oriented corporations focus more heavily on near-term commercialization possibilities rather than research driven by curiosity.^[244]

Science policy is concerned with policies that affect the conduct of the scientific enterprise, including research funding, often in pursuance of other national policy goals such as technological innovation to promote commercial product development, weapons development, health care, and environmental monitoring. Science policy sometimes refers to the act of applying scientific knowledge and consensus to the development of public policies. In accordance with public policy being concerned about the well-being of its citizens, science policy’s goal is to consider how science and technology can best serve the public.^[245] Public policy can directly affect the funding of capital equipment and intellectual infrastructure for industrial research by providing tax incentives to those organizations that fund research.^[190]

Education and awareness

Science education for the general public is embedded in the school curriculum, and is supplemented by online pedagogical content (for example, YouTube and Khan Academy), museums, and science magazines and blogs. Scientific literacy is chiefly concerned with an understanding of the scientific method, units and methods of measurement, empiricism, a basic understanding of statistics (correlations, qualitative versus quantitative observations, aggregate statistics), as well as a basic understanding of core scientific fields, such as physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, geology and computation. As a student advances into higher stages of formal education, the curriculum becomes more in depth. Traditional subjects usually included in the curriculum are natural and formal sciences, although recent movements include social and applied science as well.^[246]

The mass media face pressures that can prevent them from accurately depicting competing scientific claims in terms of their credibility within the scientific community as a whole. Determining how much weight to give different sides in a scientific debate may require considerable expertise regarding the matter.^[247] Few journalists have real scientific knowledge, and even beat reporters who are knowledgeable about certain scientific issues may be ignorant about other scientific issues that they are suddenly asked to cover.^[248][249]

Science magazines such as New Scientist, Science & Vie, and Scientific American cater to the needs of a much wider readership and provide a non-technical summary of popular areas of research, including notable discoveries and advances in certain fields of research.^[250] Science fiction genre, primarily speculative fiction, can transmit the ideas and methods of science to the general public.^[251] Recent efforts to intensify or develop links between science and non-scientific disciplines, such as literature or poetry, include the Creative Writing Science resource developed through the Royal Literary Fund.^[252]

Anti-science attitudes

While the scientific method is broadly accepted in the scientific community, some fractions of society reject certain scientific positions or are skeptical about science. Examples are the common notion that COVID-19 is not a major health threat to the US (held by 39% of Americans in August 2021)^[253] or the belief that climate change is not a major threat to the US (also held by 40% of Americans, in late 2019 and early 2020).^[254] Psychologists have pointed to four factors driving rejection of scientific results:^[255]

• Scientific authorities are sometimes seen as inexpert, untrustworthy, or biased.
• Some marginalized social groups hold anti-science attitudes, in part because these groups have often been exploited in unethical experiments.^[256]
• Messages from scientists may contradict deeply-held existing beliefs or morals.
• The delivery of a scientific message may not be appropriately targeted to a recipient’s learning style.

Anti-science attitudes seem to be often caused by fear of rejection in social groups. For instance, climate change is perceived as a threat by only 22% of Americans on the right side of the political spectrum, but by 85% on the left.^[257] That is, if someone on the left would not consider climate change as a threat, this person may face contempt and be rejected in that social group. In fact, people may rather deny a scientifically accepted fact than lose or jeopardize their social status.^[258]

Politics

Attitudes towards science are often determined by political opinions and goals. Government, business and advocacy groups have been known to use legal and economic pressure to influence scientific researchers. Many factors can act as facets of the politicization of science such as anti-intellectualism, perceived threats to religious beliefs, and fear for business interests.^[260] Politicization of science is usually accomplished when scientific information is presented in a way that emphasizes the uncertainty associated with the scientific evidence.^[261] Tactics such as shifting conversation, failing to acknowledge facts, and capitalizing on doubt of scientific consensus have been used to gain more attention for views that have been undermined by scientific evidence.^[262] Examples of issues that have involved the politicization of science include the global warming controversy, health effects of pesticides, and health effects of tobacco.^[262][263]

See also

• List of scientific occupations
• List of years in science

Notes

References

External links

• Media related to Science at Wikimedia Commons

The meaning of science has evolved over the past two centuries. So too has the recognition that the soft sciences are just as critical to humanity as the traditional hard sciences.

In fields as different as genomics or human geography, the raisons d’être of hard and soft sciences and many of their applied allies, like engineering or accountancy, are the development of new knowledge through research. This is taken further by advancing that knowledge, and sharing it through publication and teaching. It is as complicated and yet as simple: the South African Journal of Science publishes work based on, or leading to, these foundations.

The journal is about quality knowledge-producing research, not about disciplines. After all, the National Research Foundation has just made top-rating awards to scholars in widely diverse disciplines.

Recent recipients include academics from wide-ranging disciplines: epidemiology, policy studies, medicine, history and computational and applied mathematics. This is precisely what the science in the South African Journal of Science is all about, just as it is what the Academy of Science South Africa is about.

It is the diversity of different disciplines that enshrines the strength of the contemporary university (and the journal) – a strength sometimes obscured by rankings which favour the natural sciences.

While protecting the value of the essential, it is clear that there is an equally inescapable need for greater and growing mutual respect of the different ways in which knowledge is produced, and research findings reported, so that co-operation becomes more, rather than less, possible.

To make the most of science, it is now more important than ever to celebrate the contributions that it makes, across the spectrum of disciplines, whether individually or collectively.

It is in this way that science contributes significantly to the well-being of ourselves, the environment on which we depend, and the richness of our world: genetics, agriculture, meteorology, music, literature, and so on.

How might we possibly live without the benefits that they, and their fellow disciplines, all offer? What can be said about the meaning of the word “science”?

Core meaning has remained consistent

We need a clearer understanding of the etymology of the word science. What must also be considered are the implications that those meanings have had for the ways in which science has been practised and understood, at least in the Western world.

Science is one of hundreds of thousands of words in English that has an extraordinarily long etymological history. Its popular meaning has changed, century by century, and sometimes even more rapidly than that.

Yet even among those words there are core meanings that have remained consistent. In English, science came from Old French, meaning knowledge, learning, application, and a corpus of human knowledge.

It originally came from the Latin word scientia which meant knowledge, a knowing, expertness, or experience. By the late 14th century, science meant, in English, collective knowledge.

But it has consistently carried the meaning of being a socially embedded activity: people seeking, systematising and sharing knowledge.

Earlier ferocious debates echo down the centuries

There are fierce debates about what makes up the proper ways of defining and constituting the undertaking of research and designating real knowledge.

These debates have their origins in the earliest Western universities whose intellectual context was that of the values and belief systems of the Catholic Church – and in the impact that the secularisation of universities had in later centuries.

Disciplines as we know them today arose in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although they have changed, with new disciplines being added and some shrinking or disappearing, the debates continue about which disciplines are better than others.

Muller captures the essence of this debate as played out in the 1960s amid the furore generated by papers by politician Lord CP Snow (a Cambridge-trained chemist and novelist) and FR Leavis, a Cambridge literary scholar.

Snow presented a Rede Lecture at Cambridge, called provocatively “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution”. It was at the secularised guardians of elite “traditional” culture that Snow aimed his provocation.

Snow characterised scientific culture as optimistic and forward looking, though regarded as shallow and philistine by the cultivated literary culture of the literary elite, who Snow considered ignorant snobs. He derided the mutual incomprehension of the two cultures: The degree of incomprehension on both sides is the kind of joke which has gone sour and lamented the sheer
loss to us all.

The fault he laid squarely at the door of the literary intellectuals, calling them “natural Luddites” who lacked the culture to grasp the second law of thermodynamics, a piece of general cultural knowledge he likened to knowing something about Shakespeare.

And then went on to say that industrialisation was the only hope for the poor and the Third World, and that the best the developed world could do was to produce as many engineers as it could and export them to where they were needed in the developing world.

Despite his oversimplifications, Snow had hit a nerve. The most extreme response came from Leavis, doyen of the literary elite.

In a lecture at Cambridge, Leavis heaped derision on Snow’s “embarrassing vulgarity of style”, his ignorance, and ineptness as a novelist. But Leavis’ attack drew an avalanche of responses, which called it “bemused drivelling” of “unexampled ferocity”.

The debates may no longer be ferocious. But their sounds echo faintly through academia – more so in some countries than in others.

---

This piece was first published in the September/October 2015 issue of the South African Journal of Science.

English[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English science, scyence, borrowed from Old French science, escience, from Latin scientia (“knowledge”), from sciens, the present participle stem of scire (“to know”).

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /ˈsaɪ.əns/, enPR: sīʹ-əns
• Hyphenation: sci‧ence
• Rhymes: -aɪəns

Noun[edit]

science (countable and uncountable, plural sciences)

1. (countable) A particular discipline or branch of learning, especially one dealing with measurable or systematic principles rather than intuition or natural ability. [from 14th c.]

   • 2013 August 3, “Boundary problems”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.

   Of course in my opinion Social Studies is more of a science than an art.

2. Specifically the natural sciences.

   My favorite subjects at school are science, mathematics, and history.

3. (uncountable, archaic) Knowledge gained through study or practice; mastery of a particular discipline or area. [from 14th c.]
   • If we conceive God’s sight or science, before the creation, to be extended to all and every part of the world, seeing everything as it is, […] his science or sight from all eternity lays no necessity on anything to come to pass.

   • 1819, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notes on Hamlet

     Shakespeare’s deep and accurate science in mental philosophy

4. (now only theology) The fact of knowing something; knowledge or understanding of a truth. [from 14th c.]
5. (uncountable) The collective discipline of study or learning acquired through the scientific method; the sum of knowledge gained from such methods and discipline. [from 18th c.]

   • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 201:

     ‘I always ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of those going out there,’ he said.

   • 1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine‎^[1]:

     «That this use should be destructive is no doubt very deplorable, but Science knows no distinctions of the sort, but follows knowledge wherever it may lead.»

   • 1931 November 15, Winston Churchill, “Fifty Years Hence”, in Maclean’s‎^[2]:

     What is it that has produced this new prodigious speed of man? Science is the cause. Her feeble groping fingers lifted here and there, often trampled underfoot, often frozen in isolation, have now become a vast organized, united, class-conscious army marching forward upon all the fronts toward objectives none may measure or define.

   • 1951 January 1, Albert Einstein, letter to Maurice Solovine, as published in Letters to Solovine (1993)

     I have found no better expression than «religious» for confidence in the rational nature of reality […] Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.

   • 2012 January 1, Philip E. Mirowski, “Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 1, page 87:

     In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research, the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance.

6. (uncountable) Knowledge derived from scientific disciplines, scientific method, or any systematic effort.

   • 2001 September, Neil deGrasse Tyson, “Over the rainbow”, in Natural History, volume 110, number 7, page 30:

     While much good science has come from the Hubble telescope (including the most reliable measure to date for the expansion rate of the universe), you would never know from media accounts that the foundation of our cosmic knowledge continues to flow primarily from the analysis of spectra and not from looking at pretty pictures.

7. (uncountable, collective) The scientific community.

   • 2008, Dara Ó Briain Talks Funny – Live in London, United Kingdom, published 2008, spoken by stand-up comedian (Dara Ó Briain):

     Science knows it doesn’t know everything; otherwise, it’d stop.

   • 2020 September 14, “As Trump Again Rejects Science, Biden Calls Him a ‘Climate Arsonist’”, in New York Times‎^[3]:

     With wildfires raging across the West, climate change took center stage in the race for the White House on Monday as former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called President Trump a “climate arsonist” while the president said that “I don’t think science knows” what is actually happening.

   • 2021 April 27, Amanda Hess, “Inject the Vaccine Fan Fiction Directly Into My Veins”, in The New York Times‎^[4], →ISSN:

     There are plenty of earnestly respectful vaccine selfies, where the inoculated person bares a shoulder and thanks science for their shot.

   • 2021 June 3, Katherine Eban, quoting Robert Redfield, “The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins”, in Vanity Fair‎^[5]:

     “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.”

8. (euphemistic, with definite article) Synonym of sweet science (“the sport of boxing”)
   • 1816, The art and practice of English boxing (page v)

     From a conviction, that the science is universally understood, the strong are taught humility, and the weak confidence. Many have laughed at the idea, that Boxing is of national service, but they have laughed at the expence^[sic] of truth.

   • 1888, William Edwards, Art of Boxing and Science of Self-Defense:

     […] for not a blow or guard in boxing will repay you more than the cross-counter, which may well be called the sheet-anchor of the science.

Usage notes[edit]

Since the middle of the 20th century, the term science is normally used to indicate the natural sciences (e.g., chemistry), the social sciences (e.g., sociology), and the formal sciences (e.g., mathematics). In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term was broader and encompassed scholarly study of the humanities (e.g., grammar) and the arts (e.g., music).

Synonyms[edit]

• sci
• sci.

Hyponyms[edit]

Coordinate terms[edit]

• art

Derived terms[edit]

[edit]

Translations[edit]

See also[edit]

• science on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Verb[edit]

science (third-person singular simple present sciences, present participle sciencing, simple past and past participle scienced)

1. (transitive, dated) To cause to become versed in science; to make skilled; to instruct.

   • 1742, Philip Francis, Odes, Epodes, and Carmen Seculare of Horace in Latin and English:

     I mock’d at all religious Fear, Deep-scienced in the mazy Lore Of mad Philosophy

2. (transitive, colloquial, humorous) To use science to solve a problem.

Etymology 2[edit]

See scion.

Noun[edit]

science

1. Obsolete spelling of scion

Further reading[edit]

• science on Wikiquote.Wikiquote
• «science» in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 276.

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle French science, from Old French science, escience, borrowed from Latin scientia.^[1]

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /sjɑ̃s/

• Audio (France, Paris)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑ̃s
• Homophone: sciences

Noun[edit]

science f (plural sciences)

1. (literary or archaic) knowledge
2. science (field of study, etc.)

Derived terms[edit]

[edit]

• scientificité
• scientifique
• scientiste

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• “science”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Middle English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

• scyence, syens, sciens, sciense, sience

Etymology[edit]

From Old French science, from Latin scientia.

Pronunciation[edit]

• IPA^(key): /siːˈɛns(ə)/, /siˈɛns(ə)/

Noun[edit]

science (plural sciences)

1. facts, knowledge; that which is known:
   1. A science; the body of knowledge composing a specific discipline.
   2. learnt knowledge, especially from written sources.
   3. applied or situational knowledge.
   4. truth, reality, verified information.
2. One’s faculty of finding information; knowing or insight
3. One’s faculty of making sound decisions; sagaciousness.
4. One’s aptitude or learning; one’s knowledge (in a field).
5. A non-learned discipline, pursuit, or field.
6. (rare) verifiability; trust in knowledge.

Descendants[edit]

• English: science
• Scots: science

References[edit]

• “scī̆ence, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-05-24.

Middle French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Old French science.

Noun[edit]

science f (plural sciences)

1. science (field of study, etc.)
2. knowledge

Descendants[edit]

• French: science

Old French[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

• escience

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from Latin scientia.

Noun[edit]

science f (nominative singular science)

1. knowledge; wisdom

Descendants[edit]

• → Middle English: science
  • English: science
    • → Japanese: サイエンス
    • → Malay: sains
      • → Indonesian: sains
    • → Swahili: sayansi
• Middle French: science
  • French: science
    • → Khmer: ស្យង់ (syɑng)
• Norman: scienche

Project Outline

Collect the top (maximum 100) definitions of science as it is defined by
famous scientists and philosophers from the time of Aristotle, Newton,
Descartes up to modern scientists like Einstein and contemporary
philosophers such as Russell, Whitehead, Karl Popper, Toulmin, Hawking, etc.

The purpose is not to find out how each scientist defined it, but to find
out how the conception of science has evolved over time and how many different definitions or conceptions exist today.

We are not interested in the history of science or descriptions of
scientific activities or methodologies or examples, simply in how scientists
and philosophers have defined the discipline and concept of science. What
constitutes science and what does not and why?

Research Information

Definitions of Science

Any strict definition of science seems to be inadequate. The word «science» came from the Latin word for knowledge: scientia. The word ‘science’ comes from a Latin word ‘scientia’ and originally meant ‘knowledge’. But it was used more particularly to stand for ‘systematic knowledge’ rather than just any kind of knowledge.

http://www.eequalsmcsquared.auckland.ac.nz/sites/emc2/tl/philosophy/what-is-science.cfm

The baseline definition of «science,» then, is human knowledge.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee//SCIENCE/BASELINE.HTM

From the 1200’s to until the 1840’s science was known as natural philosophy

http://visionscentret.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

The philosopher Martin Heidegger correctly observed that there is no etymological link between the terms ‘technology’ and ‘science’. The ‘techn’ in ‘technology’ and ‘technique’ is the Greek for ‘art’ (as in ‘artful’), and ‘art’ is the Latin for ‘skill’. The early Greek pioneers of science insisted on the careful distinction between ‘techne’ (= traditional practical know-how) and ‘episteme’ (= scientific knowledge), which the speakers of Latin later called ‘scientia’, and which the speakers of English today call ‘science’.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

Ancient India

While it may surprise some to think of religious sages as mundane scientists, the Indian view is that religion (universal) and science are but two sides of the same coin — in short…semantics. Whether one calls a natural phenomena wind or the wind god — Vayu — one is speaking of the same thing. Yet it seems that having a spiritual foundation not only brought out important discoveries still in use today, but these discoveries also were helpful without causing harm or destruction — Swami Sada Shiva Tirtha

http://www.hinduism.co.za/amazing.htm

Spirituality gives helpful direction and science brings speed

http://www.hinduism.co.za/amazing.htm

The meaning of the term ‘science’ as it is used in the context of Yoga is specific and precise as well as broad and general. Specifically it means, simply, that Yoga is not a doctrine or set of speculative beliefs but rather an objective technique for training the body and mind so as to comprehend ultimate reality. More generally however, …, the term ‘science’ refers to the very precise, modern methods of experimentation, verification, and rational positivist investigation.

Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy — By Jo-seph S. Alter

Plato: (Plato around 400 BC)

Plato classified as knowledge only those things that are true all of the time; any «knowl-edge» we have that is true only some of the time, he called «opinion.»

Plato drew a sharp distinction between knowledge, which is certain, and mere opinion, which is not certain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_epistemology

Aristotle’s Metaphysiscs: (Aristotle around 350 BC)

Aristotle himself described his subject matter in a variety of ways: as ‘first philosophy’, or ‘the study of being qua being’, or ‘wisdom’, or ‘theology’. First philosophy is not the only field of inquiry to study beings. Natural science and mathematics also study beings, but in different ways, under different aspects. The natural scientist studies them as things that are subject to the laws of nature, as things that move and undergo change. That is, the natural scientist studies things qua movable (i.e., in so far as they are subject to change). The mathematician studies things qua countable and measurable. The metaphysician, on the other hand, studies them in a more general and abstract way — qua beings. So first phi-losophy studies the causes and principles of beings qua beings.

In Book E, Aristotle adds another description to the study of the causes and principles of beings qua beings. Whereas natural science studies objects that are material and subject to change, and mathematics studies objects that although not subject to change are nevertheless not separate from (i.e., independent of) matter, there is still room for a science that studies things (if indeed there are any) that are eternal, not subject to change, and inde-pendent of matter. Such a science, he says, is theology, and this is the “first” and “high-est” science.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/

Aristotle, on the other hand, believed that knowledge existed on a continuum. Some things, because they’re simple and only have a limited number of causes, are true all of the time. Such things are mathematics and logic. Some things, because they have a number of causes, are true only some of the time. This includes physics, biology, ethics, politics, lit-erary knowledge and so on. He called this latter category, «probable knowledge.» This dis-tinction would form the backbone of Western views of knowledge to this very day.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee//SCIENCE/BASELINE.HTM

For Aristotle, knowledge existed on a continuum. At one end were things which were true all the time (mathematics). Moving further along the continuum were things which have a number of causes and that were true (biology). Finally, at the other end, were things which were only opinion (politics). Aristotle’s concepts formed the backbone of Western ideas on knowledge.

http://www.whoosh.org/issue34/carper14.html

… science does not relate exclusively to the immutable and necessary, but also to that which ordinarily happens….. Science is only a science of that which is presented to it, of that which is, or of the knowable; consequently the notion of science is clearly relative.

The History of Ancient Philosophy by Heinrich Ritter, Alexander James Wil-liam Morrison

…Science, which is formed by the discursive faculty of human mind…

The British Critic: A New Review (1796)

Archimedes (287 BC – 212 BC)

Brian Clegg: “I have my doubts about Archimedes (…as first scientist…). Although he was a great mathematician and engineer, he still had the ancient Greek tendency to ignore ex-periment and rely on pure argument.”

http://network.nature.com/forums/sciencewriters/609

Islamic civilization (8th — 15th Centuries)

Ibn al-Haytham developed rigorous experimental methods of controlled scientific testing in order to verify theoretical hypotheses and substantiate inductive conjectures. Ibn al-Haytham’s scientific method was very similar to the modern scientific method and consisted of the following procedures:

1. Observation
2. Statement of problem
3. Formulation of hypotheses
4. Testing of hypothesis using experimentation
5. Analysis of experimental results
6. Interpretation of data and formulation of conclusion
7. Publication of findings

The development of the scientific method is considered to be so fundamental to modern science that some — especially philosophers of science and practicing scientists — consider earlier inquiries into nature to be pre-scientific. Some have described Ibn al-Haytham as the «first scientist» for this reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science

«The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence. The ancient world was, as we saw, pre- scientific. The astronomy and mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science, detailed and pro-longed observation, experimental inquiry, were altogether alien to the Greek tempera-ment. […]

What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry, of new methods of investigation, of the method of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.» — Robert Briffault wrote in The Making of Humanity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science

Roger Bacon’s Opus maius: (Roger Bacon around 1250 AD)

On the instruction of the Pope, June 22, 1266, Bacon quickly wrote “an introductory work,” the Opus maius and the related works Opus minus and Opus tertium. He set out his own new model for a system of philosophical studies that would incorporate language studies and science studies then unavailable at the Universities. He succeeded in setting out a model of an experimental science on the basis of his study of Optics (Perspectiva). He does this in a new context: the application of linguistic and scientific knowledge for a better understanding of Theology and in the service of the Res publica Christiana. It would appear that Bacon was condemned by his Order in 1278 “on account of certain suspected novel-ties.” This may have been due to his interests in astrology and alchemy. –

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/

At the beginning of the Opus maius and related works, Bacon offers a structural critique of the scholastic practice in the universities. He favors both language study and science over “Sentence-Method” as a way of interpreting the texts of Scripture. And he advocates training in mathematics and the sciences as requirements for students in theology.

The overall division of the Opus maius is Stoic: language study, natural philoso-phy/mathematics, morals. It is also clear that Bacon is constructing a “new model” for me-dieval philosophy, one in which Aristotelian concerns are taken up and transcended in a Neo-Platonism adapted towards Moral Philosophy and Christian Theology. Metaphysics is subordinated to Moral Philosophy. The latter becomes the end or finis of linguistic and sci-entific study. Logic is reduced to Mathematics, and the applications of mathematics be-come central to an understanding of the sciences.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/roger-bacon/#BacLatLanStuSciSerBotMorThe

Brian Clegg, “Some have disagreed about Bacon (..as first scientist..), because he was loose in his definition of experiment, including little more than ‘someone saw X’ as well as more formal experiments.”

http://network.nature.com/forums/sciencewriters/609

Brian Clegg, “Yet his biggest contribution was to link science and experiment, to insist that a study of the natural world by observation and exact measurement was the surest founda-tion for truth.”

http://www.brianclegg.net/brianclegg/books/firstscientist.htm

Galileo (1564 — 1642)

He (Dr Gerald Holton) added that Galileo … had «a wonderful way» of separating the super-natural from the natural. There are two equally worthy ways to understand the divine, Galileo said. «One was reverent contemplation of the Bible, God’s word,» Dr. Holton said. «The other was through scientific contemplation of the world, which is his creation.

http://mercey.org/racescinow/debatesonevolution/11.html

Descartes: (1637)

Descartes started his line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions.

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such;

The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible,

The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the sim-plest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex;

And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.»

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_the_Method

Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727)

Newton defined Newtonist Scholasticism as science and Peripatetic Philosophy as scholasticism.

http://www.alphysics.com/science/nwtnsevl2.htm

Newton found science a hodgepodge of isolated facts and laws, capable of describing some phenomena, but predicting only a few. He left it with a unified system of laws that can be applied to an enormous range of physical phenomena, and that can be used to make exact predications.

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95dec/newton.html

Newton called his theory of motion ‘natural philosophy’ and not ‘science’

http://www.eequalsmcsquared.auckland.ac.nz/sites/emc2/tl/philosophy/what-is-science.cfm

John Locke (1704)

Locke defines knowledge as «the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagree-ment and repugnancy of any of our ideas.» (IV.i.2). Because it has only to do with internal relations that hold between ideas, knowledge is not actually of the world itself.

Locke identifies four different sorts of agreement and disagreement that reason can perceive in order to produce knowledge: identity and diversity (e.g. A=A); relation (e.g. a diamond is a square laid on its side); coexistence (e.g. that the area of a triangle always equals one half the base time the height); realizing that existence belongs to the very ideas themselves (e.g. the idea of God and of the self).

To count as knowledge, the connection between ideas must be very strong. In the case of disagreement, the connection must be one of logical inconsistency, and in the case of agreement, it needs to be a necessary connection. For example, in order to know that A caused B you need to know that given A, B could not have failed to happen. In other words, to know that A caused B, you need to be able to deduce B given only the information that A, or derive B from A.

Locke’s definition of knowledge was common among 17th century thinkers. Both Rene Des-cartes and David Hume defined knowledge in much the same way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding

19th century

And that this is what the author means, in fact, is shown expressly by his definition, which describes philosophy as pursuing the origin, the end and the essence of the facts of science.

Methodist Quarterly review 1854

…consider science as a process of questioning and answering.

Science, by American Association for the Advancement of Science

Science has been defined in terms of method of inquiry and testing. At first sight this definition may seem opposed t the current cnception that science is organized or systemaied knowledge. The opposition , however, is only seeming, and disappears when the ordinary definition is completed. Not organization but the kind of organization effected by adequate ethods of tested discovery marks off science.

Democracy and Education By John Dewey

Science is nature seen by the reason, and not merely by the senses. Science exists in the mind, and in the mind alone. Wherever the substantiveness of a science may be derived from, or whatever may be their character, they are portions of a science only as they are made to function logically in the human reason. Unless they ate connected by the law of reason, and consequent so that one proposition is capable of being correctly evolved from two or more propositions, called the premises, the science as yet has no existence, and has still to be discovered. Logic, therefore, is the universal form of all science.

The Journal of Sacred Literature By John Kitto, Henry Burgess, Benjamin Harris Cowper (1851)

Science is systematized truth.

American Education: Its Principles and Elements : Dedicated to the Teach-ers …By Edward Deering Mansfield (1851)

William Dilthey: (1890s)

He argued that natural sciences were based on demonstration and experiment; they yielded more or less certain and reproducible knowledge. The human sciences, however, were based primarily on interpretation, that is, human knowledge of all things human, is a com-bination of experience and the human imagination operating on that experience. That was why the human sciences were so uncertain. While one could postulate rules for interpreta-tion, there was ample room for each individual to arrive at different conclusions regarding the same experience.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee//SCIENCE/BASELINE.HTM

Ernst Mach (1838 — 1916)

All of science was or should be nothing more than compact summaries of experience

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Einstein_and_S/index.html

Albert Einstein (1879 — 1955)

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins161289.html

He proclaimed that concepts and theories are «free inventions of the human spirit» and that no method could assuredly take us from experience to the true theory. …… he concluded that the right concepts and theories could be found merely by seeking the mathematically simplest theories.

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Einstein_and_S/index.html

Einstein’s notion … concepts and theories are free inventions not fixed by experience

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Einstein_and_S/index.html

This sense of the closeness of theory to experience was shattered by Einstein’s general the-ory of relativity. It required a new and complicated mathematics then unfamiliar to most physicists. Yet most of its predictions were no different than those of Newton’s much simpler theory. If theories were merely summaries of experience and did not add to them, how could two theories, so much in agreement on experience, differ so much in structure?

Einstein’s physics and the new physics developed by others in the twentieth century led to a sense of the fragility of theories and the powerlessness of evidence to pick out the unique truths of nature. Philosophers of science struggled to accommodate this new sense within their systems, all the while seeking to fit their ideas with Einstein’s theories.

http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Einstein_and_S/index.html

Michael Atiyah (1960s)

Atiyah asserted that «independence of thought really is the hallmark of a scientist».

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

Karl Popper (1966) (1902 – 1994)

Karl Popper, «Science is a history of corrected mistakes»

In Popper’s view all the great theories of the past, such as Newtonian mechanics, are still scientific even though they have been shown to be false.

They exposed themselves to test (i.e., falsification); that is the mark of the scientific. Alas, they did not pass some of their tests and so were shown to be false.

The second way of being systematic concerns the organization of a body of knowledge into:

(a) The definition of all its fundamental concepts,

(b) The separation of all of its claims into

(b1) the fundamental laws, principles or axioms of the subject matter, and

(b2) the derivative or less fundamental laws or theorems,

(c) The vast number of observational facts that concern science, such as all the facts that one can observe and measure about bodies in motion, or their heat properties, and the like.

http://www.eequalsmcsquared.auckland.ac.nz/sites/emc2/tl/philosophy/what-is-science.cfm

(Newton presented his theory of motion in this way when he published his path-breaking book Principia Mathematica first in 1686)

A scientific statement, he said, is one that can be proved wrong, like «the sun always rises in the east» or «light in a vacuum travels 186,000 miles a second.» By Popper’s rules, a law of science can never be proved; it can only be used to make a prediction that can be tested, with the possibility of being proved wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/sciencespecial2/15evol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

By Popper’s rules, a law of science can never be proved; it can only be used to make a pre-diction that can be tested, with the possibility of being proved wrong

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/sciencespecial2/15evol.html

Moreover, the natural sciences with their critical methods of problem solving, and some of the social sciences too, especially history and economics, have represented for quite a long time our best efforts in problem solving and fact finding (by fact finding I mean, of course, the discovery of statements or theories which correspond to facts). Thus these sciences contain, by and large, the best statements and theories from the point of view of truth; that is, those giving the best description of the world of facts, or of what one calls ‘reality’.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/at/popper.htm

Paul Feyerabend(1975) (1924 — 1994)

Feyerabend’s position is generally seen as radical in the philosophy of science, because it implies that philosophy can neither succeed in providing a general description of science, nor in devising a method for differentiating products of science from non-scientific entities like myths.

Feyerabend’s position is generally seen as radical in the philosophy of science, because it implies that philosophy can neither succeed in providing a general description of science, nor in devising a method for differentiating products of science from non-scientific entities like myths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend

Thus science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that have been developed by man, and not necessarily the best. It is conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favor of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without having ever examined its advantages and its limits. And as the accepting and rejecting of ideologies should be left to the individual it follows that the separation of state and church must be supplemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most ag-gressive, and most dogmatic religious institution. Such a separation may be our only chance to achieve a humanity we are capable of, but have never fully realized.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/feyerabe.htm

Willard Quine (1951)

The unit of empirical significance is the whole of science.

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ulti-mately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience.

Science is a continuation of common sense, and it continues the common-sense expedient of swelling ontology to simplify theory.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/quine.htm

C Marchetti (1980s)

In one of his delightfully witty essays, entitled, “On Progress and Providence”, the Italian scientist, C Marchetti, proposes a new definition of science: “the exploration of the exter-nal word by an information system through mutation and selection.” … The same definition naturally covers technology.

The Network Revolution: Confessions of a Computer Scientist By Jacques Vallee

Stephen Hawking (1942 — )

Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science:

Stephen Hawking, The Universe In a Nutshell p31

Alex Rosenberg (2000)

Science does not accept as knowledge what cannot be somehow subject to the test of ex-perience. But at the same time, the obligation of science to explain our experience re-quires that it go beyond and beneath that experience in the things, properties, processes and events it appeals to in providing these explanations. How to reconcile the demands of empiricism and explanation is the hardest problem for the philosophy of science, indeed, for philosophy as a whole. For if we cannot reconcile explanation and empiricism, it is pretty clear that it is empiricism that must be given up. … But if scientific knowledge is derived not from experiment and observation, but, say, rational reflection alone, then who is to say that alternative world-views, myths, revealed religion, which claim to compete with science to explain reality will not also claim to be justified in the same way?»

Alex Rosenberg, Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction

Douglas Allchin (2000)

«Cherish mistakes, since to err is science»

SCIENCE is a self-correcting process.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000225/ai_n14292342

Theo Theocharis (2000)

Science is an open-ended quest for knowledge, it must be clarified that it is the horizons that are constantly and ceaselessly expanded, not that one never attains any definite and final article of knowledge. The open-endedness is in the quest, not in the specific findings resulting from the quest. The quest for knowledge is open-ended because the number of individual items of possible knowledge is infinite, but each item of course is in principle fully attainable and conclusively verifiable

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

The current (post-)modernist (mis-)conception of science implies that science goes on for ever not because the number of truths is infinite (for allegedly there aren’t any truths at all) but because science never gets anywhere.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

Science is the systematic study of observational data in order to gain an understanding of the world around us. The understanding is (almost universally) supposed to somehow come about by devising models or theories that work; all that is required from a scientific theory in this scheme is empirical ‘adequacy’ and practical ‘reliability’. Models in this scheme are mere tools that serve as instruments for routine computations and standard predictions.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

science is only one of many ways of producing ‘truth’; only very few insist that it is the most reliable way. It will be argued here that in fact only the scientific method (and only when correctly applied) can generate truth.

Conversely, apart from the obvious, the only truth possible is by definition scientific.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

science is the one and only DEFINING characteristic of MODERN society. If one wants to really understand modern society, one will first have to understand science.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

The fashionable view in recent decades has been that ALL scientific knowledge is imperma-nent and transitory.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

Science is the conscious, disciplined, systematic, and sustained, endeavor to methodically discover the non-obvious truths — of both nature and society.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

Another instructive lesson that one must learn from the long history of science is that theo-rizing must be securely grounded on the solid foundation of careful observation and sound logic.

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

The most basic hallmark of science must be CORRECTNESS of thought, expression, and exe-cution. Apart from accidental discoveries that can be made by anybody, it is ‘EPISTEMO-LOGICAL CORRECTNESS’ that CAUSES discovery, invention, and advancement. Freedom merely FACILITATES the communication and dissemination of discovery and invention (and, naturally, of everything else)

http://itis.volta.alessandria.it/episteme/ep4/ep4th1.htm

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Lan-guage, Fourth Edition 2000

«The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation [scientific method], and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena. Such activities applied to an object of inquiry or study.»

http://www.bartleby.com/61/67/S0146700.html

Kansas Science Standards. Kansas State Board of Edu-cation. Adopted February 14, 2001

Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us.

http://www.uwosh.edu/colleges/cols/Clergy%20Sermons%20PDF/chin_westhampton_ma.pdf

Mariano Artigas (2001) (1938 — 2006)

Empirical Science is a «state of affairs,» a goal-directed human activity whose existence and progress are necessarily grounded on some assumptions about the natural order and about our ability to know it. The general presuppositions of science can be considered necessary conditions of science; natural order, human cognitive ability, and science as a goal-directed enterprise are «state of affairs» tat exist in nature, in the human being, and in society, re-spectively.

The Mind of the Universe: Understanding Science and Religion — By Mariano Artigas

Kansas State Board of Education (2005)

…calls science «a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observation, hy-pothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.»

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/sciencespecial2/15evol.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

John Timmer (2007)

«[Science’s] conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word.» In this con-text, tentative should be viewed as an indication that the models and theories used to di-rect and interpret scientific research may be incomplete, inexact, or, in some cases, simply wrong. In this sense, tentativeness in science is a form of decisiveness, as it allows research to move forward despite constant uncertainty.

In this capacity, tentativeness can also play a role in the demarcation between science and non-science. Many forms of pseudoscience, such as creationism, strive to squeeze data into support of a pre-ordained and invariant conclusion. Others, such as belief in UFO abduc-tions, persist despite extensive counter evidence.

In light of this, one potential way to gain a sense of how scientific a concept is would be to ask one of its proponents what pieces of data would cause them to modify or discard their favored model.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/10/13/5609

Reliance on natural law is central to the legal definition of science in the US

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2006/11/28/6104

It is clear that much of science is performed in reference to natural law, or involves at-tempts to describe such laws via observations of natural systems. More commonly, how-ever, natural laws act as limitations on what science will consider: models and hypotheses are formulated in reference to natural laws in the sense that nothing is proposed that knowingly violates them, and those proposals that do are rejected.

It is equally clear, however, that much of science, as well as the applied fields derived from it, occurs at a significant distance from the most fundamental of natural laws, such as those of quantum mechanics. Science has coped with this in a variety of ways. In some of these cases, observations have led to other natural laws that are separated from those of physics (for example: all organisms on earth are related through common descent). In other fields, science is still awaiting the technological advances that can allow a more direct, quantitative study of processes that can link observations to natural laws. In cases such as these, the work focuses on a subset or approximation of natural laws. For example, those studying protein structures recognize that they ultimately form through processes that originate at the quantum level. Most of the insights in the field, however, can be derived by a focus on charge attraction/repulsion and Van der Waals forces.

Because of this important position, a significant aspect of evaluating the quality of science involves judging whether the use of natural laws is appropriate. Is the observational data that supports the existence of a natural law of sufficient quality to consider that law a valid basis for scientific thought? Do the approximations chosen in a study still reflect appropri-ate physical limitations? Even though some of those who responded did not recognize the term «natural law», it is clear that these sorts of evaluations play a major role in the evaluation of the scientific literature.

In this formulation, natural laws do serve as a powerful demarcation test between science and the non-scientific.

Jim Newton (2007)

In science, the term natural science refers to a rational approach to the study of the uni-verse, which is understood as obeying rules or laws of natural origin. The term natural science is also used to distinguish those fields that use the scientific method to study nature from the social sciences, which use the scientific method to study human behavior and society, and from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, which use a different methodology.

http://figbranch.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=25

Natural sciences form the basis for the applied sciences. Together, the natural and applied sciences are distinguished from the social sciences on the one hand, and from the humanities, theology and the arts on the other. Mathematics, statistics and computer science are not considered natural sciences, but provide many tools and frameworks used within the natural sciences. Alongside this traditional usage, the phrase natural sciences is also sometimes used more narrowly to refer to its everyday usage, that is, related to natural history. In this sense «natural sciences» may refer to the biological sciences and perhaps also the earth sciences, as distinguished from the physical sciences, including astronomy, physics, and chemistry. Within the natural sciences, the term hard science is sometimes used to describe those sub-fields that rely on experimental, quantifiable data or the scientific method and focus on accuracy and objectivity. These usually include physics, chemistry and many of the sub-fields of biology. By contrast, soft science is often used to describe the scientific fields that are more reliant on qualitative research, including the social sciences

http://figbranch.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=25

Normdoering (2007)

Science is knowledge gained by testing ideas against reality

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2007/03/religions-war-on-science-part-1.html

Bruce Railsback ()

Science is the concerted human effort to understand, or to understand better, the history of the natural world and how the natural world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding — definition by Bruce Railsback, Geology Faculty, University of Georgia

The critical commonality is that all these people are making and recording observations of nature, or of simulations of nature, in order to learn more about how nature, in the broad-est sense, works

One of their main goals is to show that old ideas (the ideas of scientists a century ago or perhaps just a year ago) are wrong and that, instead, new ideas may better explain nature

http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/1122science2.html

Frank Wolf ()

The scientific method has four steps

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quanti-tatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experi-menters and properly performed experiments.

If the experiments bear out the hypothesis it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature (more on the concepts of hypothesis, model, theory and law below). If the experiments do not bear out the hypothesis, it must be rejected or modified. What is key in the description of the scientific method just given is the predictive power (the ability to get more out of the theory than you put in; see Barrow, 1991) of the hypothesis or theory, as tested by experiment. It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.

http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/AppendixE/AppendixE.html

Today, I am going to give you a very fundamental and detailed knowledge about What is Science? I will discuss science branches, importance…

Hello Friends! I hope you all are doing well. Today, I will share with you a very comprehensive tutorial about What is Science? Here, we will discuss science branches, importance of science in our life, popular science books, famous scientists and great inventions in the field of science. Science is derived from a Latin word’ Scientia’ means knowledge. When we are saying the word Science, refers to the study of every simple or complex phenomena occurring around us. For example, from the food we enjoy, to the cloth we wear, everything is science.

 

 

Now let’s get to know what is Science?

What is Science?

Science is the most important platform of knowledge and understanding the world. It has improved the quality of almost every field of life. Science follows the following step to understand natural phenomena. Let’s figure out these steps.

• Observation
• Identification
• Hypothesis
• Experimental investigation
• Theory

Before moving forward, we should know the proper & precise definition of science.

Science Definition

• The observational & experimental study about the behavior and structure of natural and physical world around us.
• Science is also the understand of a specific are of study by following particular methodology.
• In simple words, science is the observational study of nature around us and natural things.

Main branches of Science

The scientist divided science into 3 major fields. Each branch covers different areas of study. You must go though these branches briefly for your better understanding.

1.Natural science

The field of science, focus on the study don natural processes of the universe. This branch is further divided into life science and physical science.

2. Formal science

The area of study about formal systems. The further branches of this field are logic and math.

3. Social sciences

The branch of science deals with human behavior in the society.

As I have told you, science is very broad field. It has hundreds of branches. Let’s have a look to some other popular branches of science & their definitions:

No.	Branch of Science	Description
1	Acanthochronology	The study about cactus with time in ordered sequence.
2	Acarology	The branch of science, study the mites.
3	Accountancy	It is the analysing and ,measurement study of financial & economical information
3	Aceology	The study of remedies, development of therapies.
4	Acology	The study of medicine
5	Adenology	The branch of science, studies about glands.
6	Agroecology	The ecological study applied on the production of agricultural products.
7	Agrogeology	Branch of science, focus on agro-minerals.
8	Agrology	The study about the fertility of agriculture soil.
9	Algology	The study about algae.
10	Anatomy	The study about human body structure.
11	Astrodynamics	The study on the rockets and craft’s motion in space.
12	Bacteriology	This branch of science deals with the study about bacteria & diseases caused by them.
13	Bromatology	The study about food.
14	Barology	This is the gravitational force study.
15	Biology	The study of life processes.
16	Calorifics	The branch of science, studies heat.
17	Climatology	The study about climate conditions.
18	Cynology	The study on dogs.
19	Egyptology	The study on Egypt (ancient).
20	cytology	The study of cells.

I have enlist name of few branches of sciences, getting popular among students.

List of other popular Science branches
Andragogy	Aromachology
Andrology	Astacology
Anemology	Astheniology
Angiology	Astrobotany
Anthropobiology	Astrobiology
Anthropology	Astrogeology
Anthrozoology	Astronomy
Apiology	Astrophysics
Aquatic ecology	Astroseismology
Arachnology	Atmology
Archaeology	Audiology
Archelogy	Autecology
Archology	Autology
Areology	Auxology
Bathymetry	Cambistry
Batology	Campanology
Bibliology	Carcinology
Bibliotics	Cardiology
Bioecology	Caricology
Biochemistry	Cambistry
Bionomics	Cometology
Biophysics	Computer science
Biopsychology	Conchology
Biotribology	Connectomics

How is Science Important in daily life?

Today, we can’t ignore the importance of science in our everyday life tasks. Let’s have a quick look around you. The fan, giving you comfort in summer, is science. When you wake up in the morning, and use brush and toothpaste both are given by science. The kitchen equipment’s i.e. oven & microwave are all about the science. All entertainment tools you are using such as mobile, TV and laptop all are the magic of science.

Moreover, it is the science that discovers the treatment of many diseases. You know, in the past, due to lack of advancement in the field of science, there was no cure for many diseases. But now the laser technology has been developed because of science. In short, science has raised the technology in medical field to a great level.

Not only this, science also totally changed the agriculture field as well i.e. increase the productivity of crops by using new machinery and technologies.

Further, In transportation, all the vehicles around you are inventions of science.

Today, you are communicating to you dear ones by just one click on your phone, is due to science.

Simply, science has become our lives so much easier than before. Even now we can’t live without it.

Top most concerned research topic of Science

There are topics in science world, always remains on top of the list for research purpose. Such as, some diseases are still a mystery for the scientist. For understanding any field, you must know, what is going in that particular area of study. This will not only enhance your interest but also motivate you to study those mystery topics. Here, I am going to enlist them.

• Genomic and molecular evolution.
• Relation of metabolism system and exercise.
• Comparative Genomics.
• Symbiosis in parasites.
• CRISPR.
• Climate changes.
• Genetic Engineering.
• Neurobiological reasons of sleep.
• Behavior of economics.
• Invention of modern technology.
• Development of scientific tools.
• The evolution of Infectious diseases.

Top Influential scientist in the world

There are so many people who spend their lives to serve humanity by contributing in the field of science. Let’s read some of the popular scientists & their discoveries.

Top Scientist in the World
No.	Scientist Name	Discoveries
1	Andre-Marie Ampere	He discovered the electrical current carrying wires. He also invented electromagnetic theory.
2	Anaximander	He revealed the most ancient scientific theory about our planet that it is free in the space. The planet does not need anything for support.
3	Mary Anning	He was the first scientist who found the complete plesiosaur specimen. He also assumed the dinosaur diets.
4	Archimedes	He was the founder of mechenics &hydrostatics. He also calculates the value of pi. Moreover, he gives new geometry tools, and many other machinery designed.
5	Aristarchus	He completely changed the idea about earth that it moves around sun in circular orbit.
6	Alexander Graham Bell	He was the greatest scientist who invented telephone, metal detector as well as photo phone. He discovered the first device that carries human voice in form of light.
7	Daniel Bernoulli	He gives very popular Bernoulli’s law which describes the lifting of airplane wings.Further he gives theories about effect of temp on gas particles speed.
8	Elizabeth Blackwell	She was the first qualified physician women of America, as founder of first medical school there.
9	Niels Bohr	He founded the quantum theory; electron can orbit in only specific orbits around atom. He was the founder of quantum mechanics.
10	Robert Boyle	He was the first who properly defined molecule, element and compound. He also invented the Boyle’s law also called first gas law.
11	Tycho Brahe	He had given the way for planetary laws of Kepler and Newton’s law of gravity.
12	Brahmagupta	He defined and invented mathematical properties of Zero. He also gives the formulas for quadratic equation solution.
13	Robert Bunsen	He discovered two elements caesium & rubidium. Also found the arsenic poisoning , zinc-carbon battery. He also invented flash photography, and revealed the designing of geysers.

Other popular scientist are:

List of other popular scientist
Santiago Ramón y Cajal	Galen
Rachel Carson	Galileo Galilei
George Washington Carver	Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
James Chadwick	Carl Friedrich Gauss
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar	Sophie Germain
Erwin Chargaff	Willard Gibbs
Nicolaus Copernicus	Jane Goodall
Jacques Cousteau	William Harvey
Marie Curie	Caroline Herschel
John Dalton	Heinrich Hertz
Charles Darwin	David Hilbert
Democritus	Hipparchus
René Descartes	Alain Aspect
Frank Drake	Martin Karplus
Albert Einstein	David Baltimore
Eratosthenes	Donald Knuth
Euclid	Allen Bard
Leonhard Euler	Robert Marks II
Michael Faraday	Timothy Berners- Lee
Pierre de Fermat	Craig Mello
Fibonacci	John Tyler Bonner
Ronald Fisher	Robert Hooke
Alexander Fleming	Grace Hopper
Benjamin Franklin	Jack Horner
Rosalind Franklin	Hippocrates

Popular books of science

Reading a good book can bring a lot of change in your life. So, check out some popular science books to better understand science. I am going to discuss my most favorite science books briefly here.

1. Burn: The Misunderstood Science of Metabolism

You must have knowledge about our metabolism system. Here, in this book, author provides valuable suggestion how to increase metabolism by exercise. According to author, we burn about 3000 cal every day, no matter what our activities are. Isn’t this interesting? Read this book for complete guidance.

2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This is a wonderful book deeply provides understanding to human functions and their interaction with organism and environment.

3. The Drunken Botanist

Let’s talk about another amazing book. This book provides knowledge about the formation of variety of alcohols from plants. The author explains about the production of rice as well as other trivia bits.

4. Wonderful Life

This book is actually about the beautiful nature and describes the journey of Burgess to provide reader valuable lesion about the oldest fossil fuels in the world.

The list of other worth reading science books:

I want to suggest more books of science below for your benefits.

• Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World:
• So, You Want to Be a Coder?: The Ultimate Guide to a Career in Programming, Video Game Creation, Robotics, and More!:
• Black Inventors for Children: Famous African American Inventors Who Changed History Forever!:
• Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail:
• Bathtub Science:
• The Berenstain Bears’ Big Book of Science and Nature:
• Queen Bees and Wannabes, 3rd Edition: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boys, and the New Realities of Girl World
• Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
• The Art of Choosing
• Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
• The Mismeasure of Man
• The Portable Jung
• The Freud Reader
• The Invisible Gorilla
• The Upside of Irrationality
• Man’s Search for Meaning
• High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society
• Magic Trees of the Mind: How to Nurture Your Child’s Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions from Birth Through Adolescence
• Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
• Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
• White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

I hope this article will help you to better understand science & its branches. For more detail, please read the refer Science books above.

Syed Zain Nasir

syedzainnasir

I am Syed Zain Nasir, the founder of The Engineering Projects (TEP). I am a
programmer since 2009 before that I just search things, make small projects and now I am sharing my
knowledge through this platform. I also work as a freelancer and did many projects related to
programming and electrical circuitry. My Google Profile+

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