Science
Overview
Definition & Terminology
The word "science" generally refers to any of the following1:
- An intellectual endeavor aimed at a rational understanding of reality (also described as "the natural and social world")
- A corpus of currently accepted substantive knowledge
- The community of scientists, with its mores and its social and economic structure
- Applied science and technology (as in "science has achieved many wonderful things")
For the purposes of discussion on this site, "science" should be used to refer to definition #1. Definition #2 is more precisely termed "scientific knowledge"; definition #3 is more precisely termed "the scientific community", "the scientific establishment", or other similar phrases; and definition #4 should be referred to as "technology" or in some other way which makes clear that one is talking about the application (definition #4) of scientific knowledge rather than the process by which that knowledge is acquired (definition #1).
Key Attributes
Science (definition #1) is:
- a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation
- a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge about reality
Science's methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: the commitment to the incessant testing of theoretical assertions through observations and/or experimentation, and to revising or discarding those theories where experiment shows them to be inaccurate.
Science generally proceeds from the assumption that there is an objective reality or truth.
Overview References
1
Pseudoscience and Postmodernism: Antagonists or Fellow-Travelers? (PDF) by Alan Sokal ([1]): includes an excellent lay-level overview of the key attributes of science, a similar overview of pseudoscience, and guidelines for distinguishing between them
Reference
Related Articles
Links
- Wikipedia: Science wars