Science

Overview

Definition & Terminology

The word "science" generally refers to any of the following¹:

1. An intellectual endeavor aimed at a rational understanding of reality (also described as "the natural and social world")
2. A corpus of currently accepted substantive knowledge
3. The community of scientists, with its mores and its social and economic structure
4. 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

• Wikipedia

Related Articles

• religion vs. science

Links

• Wikipedia: Science wars