Science (from the
Latin
scientia, meaning "knowledge") is, in its broadest sense,
any
systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive
practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or
predictable type of outcome. In this sense,
science may
refer to a highly skilled technique or
practice.
In its more restricted contemporary sense, science is a system of
acquiring knowledge based on
scientific method, and to the organized
body of knowledge gained through such
research. This article focuses on the more
restricted use of the word. Science as discussed in this article is
sometimes called
experimental
science to differentiate it from
applied science, which is the application of
scientific research to specific human needs—although the two are
commonly interconnected.
Science is a continuing effort to discover and increase human
knowledge and understanding through
disciplined research. Using controlled methods, scientists collect
observable evidence of natural or social
phenomena, record measurable
data relating to the
observations, and analyze this information to
construct
theoretical explanations of how
things work. The methods of scientific research include the
generation of
hypotheses about how
phenomena work, and
experimentation
that tests these hypotheses under controlled conditions. Scientists
are also expected to publish their information so other scientists
can do similar experiments to double-check their conclusions. The
results of this process enable better understanding of past events,
and better ability to predict future events of the same kind as
those that have been tested.
Basic classifications
Scientific fields are commonly
divided into two major groups:
natural
sciences, which study natural phenomena (including
biological life), and
social sciences, which study
human behavior and
societies. These groupings are
empirical sciences, which means the knowledge must
be based on observable
phenomena and
capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers
working under the same conditions. There are also related
disciplines that are grouped into interdisciplinary and applied
sciences, such as
engineering and
health science. Within these
categories are specialized scientific fields that can include
elements of other scientific disciplines but often possess their
own terminology and body of expertise.
Mathematics, which is classified as a
formal science, has both similarities
and differences with the natural and social sciences. It is similar
to
empirical sciences in that it involves
an objective, careful and systematic study of an area of knowledge;
it is different because of its method of verifying its knowledge,
using
a
priori rather than empirical methods. Formal science,
which also includes
statistics and
logic, is vital to the empirical sciences.
Major advances in formal science have often led to major advances
in the empirical sciences. The formal sciences are essential in the
formation of
hypotheses,
theories, and
laws,
both in discovering and describing how things work (natural
sciences) and how people think and act (social sciences).
History and etymology
While
empirical investigations of the
natural world have been described since
antiquity (for example, by
Aristotle,
Theophrastus and
Pliny the Elder), and
scientific methods have been employed
since the
Middle Ages (for example, by
Ibn al-Haytham,
Abu Rayhan Biruni and
Roger Bacon), the dawn of modern science is
generally traced back to the
early
modern period, during what is known as the
Scientific Revolution of the 16th and
17th centuries.
The word "science" comes through the
Old
French, and is derived in turn from the
Latin , "knowledge", the nominal form of the verb ,
"to know". The
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root that
yields
scire is
*skei-, meaning to "cut,
separate, or discern". Similarly, the Greek word for science is
'επιστήμη', deriving from the verb 'επίσταμαι', 'to know'. From the
Middle Ages to the
Enlightenment,
science or
scientia meant any systematic recorded knowledge.
Science therefore had the same sort of very broad meaning
that
philosophy had at that
time. In other languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese,
and Italian, the word corresponding to
science also
carries this meaning.
Prior to the 1700s, the preferred term for the study of nature was
natural philosophy, while English
speakers most typically referred to other philosophical disciplines
(such as
logic,
metaphysics,
epistemology,
ethics and
aesthetics) as
moral philosophy. Today, "moral philosophy"
is more-or-less synonymous with "ethics". Far into the 1700s,
science and
natural philosophy
were not quite synonymous, but only became so later with the direct
use of what would become known formally as the
scientific method. By contrast, the word
"science" in English was still used in the 17th century (1600s) to
refer to the
Aristotelian concept of
knowledge which was secure enough to be used as a sure prescription
for exactly how to do something. In this differing sense of the two
words, the philosopher
John Locke wrote
disparagingly in 1690 that "natural philosophy [the study of
nature] is not capable of being made a science".
Locke was to be proven wrong, however. By the early 1800s, natural
philosophy had begun to separate from philosophy, though it often
retained a very broad meaning. In many cases,
science
continued to stand for reliable knowledge about any topic, in the
same way it is still used in the broad sense (see the introduction
to this article) in modern terms such as
library science,
political science, and
computer science. In the more narrow sense
of
science, as natural philosophy became linked to an
expanding set of well-defined laws (beginning with Galileo's laws,
Kepler's laws, and Newton's laws for motion), it became more
popular to refer to natural philosophy as natural science. Over the
course of the nineteenth century, moreover, there was an increased
tendency to associate science with study of the natural world (that
is, the non-human world). This move sometimes left the study of
human thought and society (what would come to be called
social science) in a linguistic limbo by the
end of the century and into the next.
Through the 1800s, many English speakers were increasingly
differentiating science (i.e., the natural sciences) from all other
forms of knowledge in a variety of ways. The now-familiar
expression “
scientific method,”
which refers to the
prescriptive part of how to make
discoveries in natural philosophy, was almost unused until then,
but became widespread after the 1870s, though there was rarely
total agreement about just what it entailed. The word "scientist,"
meant to refer to a systematically-working natural philosopher, (as
opposed to an intuitive or empirically-minded one) was coined in
1833 by William Whewell. Discussion of
scientists as a special group of people who did
science, even if their attributes were up for debate, grew in the
last half of the 19th century. Whatever people actually meant by
these terms at first, they ultimately depicted science, in the
narrow sense of the habitual use of the scientific method and the
knowledge derived from it, as something deeply distinguished from
all other realms of human endeavor.
By the twentieth century (1900s), the modern notion of science as a
special kind of knowledge about the world, practiced by a distinct
group and pursued through a unique method, was essentially in
place. It was used to give legitimacy to a variety of fields
through such titles as "scientific" medicine, engineering,
advertising, or motherhood. Over the 1900s, links between science
and
technology also grew increasingly
strong.
Scientific method
A
scientific method seeks to
explain the events of
nature in a
reproducible way, and to use these
reproductions to make useful
predictions.
It is done through observation of natural phenomena, and/or through
experimentation that tries to simulate natural events under
controlled conditions. It provides an objective process to find
solutions to problems in a number of scientific and technological
fields.
Based on observations of a phenomenon, a scientist may generate a
model. This is an attempt to
describe or depict the phenomenon in terms of a logical physical or
mathematical representation. As empirical evidence is gathered, a
scientist can suggest a
hypothesis to
explain the phenomenon. This description can be used to make
predictions that are testable by experiment or observation using
scientific method. When a hypothesis proves unsatisfactory, it is
either modified or discarded.
While performing experiments,
scientists
may have a preference for one outcome over another, and it is
important to ensure that this tendency does not bias their
interpretation. A strict following of a scientific method attempts
to minimize the influence of a scientist's bias on the outcome of
an experiment. This can be achieved by correct
experimental design, and a thorough
peer review of the experimental results
as well as conclusions of a study. 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.
Once a hypothesis has survived testing, it may become adopted into
the framework of a
scientific
theory. This is a logically reasoned, self-consistent model or
framework for describing the behavior of certain natural phenomena.
A theory typically describes the behavior of much broader sets of
phenomena than a hypothesis—commonly, a large number of hypotheses
can be logically bound together by a single theory. These broader
theories may be formulated using principles such as
parsimony (traditionally known as "
Occam's Razor"). They are then repeatedly
tested by analyzing how the collected evidence (
facts) compares to the theory. When a theory survives a
sufficiently large number of empirical observations, it then
becomes a scientific generalization that can be taken as fully
verified.
Unlike a mathematical proof, a scientific theory is
empirical, and is always open to
falsification if new evidence is presented.
Even the most basic and fundamental theories may turn out to be
imperfect if new observations are inconsistent with them. Critical
to this process is making every relevant aspect of research
publicly available, which allows ongoing review and repeating of
experiments and observations by multiple researchers operating
independently of one another. Only by fulfilling these expectations
can it be determined how reliable the experimental results are for
potential use by others.
Mathematics
Mathematics is essential to the
sciences. One important function of mathematics in science is the
role it plays in the expression of scientific
models.
Observing and collecting measurements, as well as hypothesizing and
predicting, often require extensive use of mathematics.
Arithmetic,
algebra,
geometry,
trigonometry and
calculus, for example, all are essential to
physics. Virtually every branch of
mathematics has applications in science, including "pure" areas
such as
number theory and
topology.
Statistical methods, which are
mathematical techniques for summarizing and analyzing data, allow
scientists to assess the level of reliability and the range of
variation in experimental results. Statistical analysis plays a
fundamental role in many areas of both the natural sciences and
social sciences.
Computational science applies
computing power to simulate real-world situations, enabling a
better understanding of scientific problems than formal mathematics
alone can achieve. According to the
Society for
Industrial and Applied Mathematics, computation is now as
important as theory and experiment in advancing scientific
knowledge.
Whether mathematics itself is properly classified as science has
been a matter of some debate. Some thinkers see mathematicians as
scientists, regarding physical experiments as inessential or
mathematical proofs as equivalent to experiments. Others do not see
mathematics as a science, since it does not require an experimental
test of its theories and hypotheses. Mathematical
theorems and
formulas are
obtained by
logical derivations
which presume
axiomatic systems, rather than
the combination of
empirical observation
and logical reasoning that has come to be known as
scientific method. In general, mathematics
is classified as
formal science,
while natural and social sciences are classified as
empirical sciences.
Scientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists,
its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into
"sub-communities" each working on a particular field within
science.
Fields
Fields of science are widely-recognized categories of specialized
expertise, and typically embody their own
terminology and
nomenclature. Each field will commonly be
represented by one or more
scientific
journal, where
peer reviewed
research will be published.
Institutions
Learned societies for the
communication and promotion of scientific thought and
experimentation have existed since the
Renaissance period.
The oldest surviving
institution is the in Italy
.
National
Academy of Sciences are
distinguished institutions that exist in a number of countries,
beginning with the British
Royal
Society in 1660 and the French in 1666.
International scientific organizations, such as the
International Council for
Science, have since been formed to promote cooperation
between the scientific communities of different nations.
More
recently, influential government agencies have been created to
support scientific research, including the National Science Foundation
in the U.S.
Other prominent organizations include the
National Scientific and Technical Research Council
in Argentina, the
academies of
science of many nations,
CSIRO in
Australia, in France,
Max Planck
Society and in Germany, and in Spain,
CSIC.
Literature
An enormous range of
scientific
literature is published.
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 the
Philosophical
Transactions, began publication in 1665. Since that time
the total number of active periodicals has steadily increased. As
of 1981, one estimate for the number of scientific and technical
journals in publication was 11,500. Today
Pubmed lists almost 40,000, related to the medical
sciences only.
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 generally considered necessary to communicate the
achievements, news, and ambitions of scientists to a wider
populace.
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.
Science books engage the interest of many more
people. Tangentially, the
science
fiction genre, primarily fantastic in nature, engages the
public imagination and transmits the ideas, if not the methods, of
science.
Recent efforts to intensify or develop links between science and
non-scientific disciplines such as
Literature or, more specifically,
Poetry, include the
Creative Writing Science
resource developed through the
Royal
Literary Fund.
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science seeks to understand the nature and
justification of scientific knowledge. It has proven difficult to
provide a definitive
account of scientific
method that can decisively serve to distinguish science from
non-science. Thus there are legitimate arguments about exactly
where the borders are, which is known as the
problem of demarcation. There is
nonetheless a set of core precepts that have broad consensus among
published philosophers of science and within the
scientific community at large. For
example, it is universally agreed that scientific hypotheses and
theories must be capable of being independently tested and verified
by other scientists in order to become accepted by the scientific
community.
There are different schools of thought in the philosophy of
scientific method.
Methodological naturalism
maintains that scientific investigation must adhere to
empirical study and independent verification as a
process for properly developing and evaluating natural explanations
for
observable phenomena. Methodological
naturalism, therefore, rejects
supernatural explanations,
arguments from authority and biased
observational studies.
Critical rationalism instead
holds that unbiased observation is not possible and a demarcation
between natural and supernatural explanations is arbitrary; it
instead proposes
falsifiability as
the landmark of empirical theories and falsification as the
universal empirical method. Critical rationalism argues for the
ability of science to increase the scope of testable knowledge, but
at the same time against its
authority, by
emphasizing its inherent
fallibility. It
proposes that science should be content with the rational
elimination of errors in its theories, not in seeking for their
verification (such as claiming certain or probable proof or
disproof; both the proposal and falsification of a theory are only
of methodological, conjectural, and tentative character in critical
rationalism).
Instrumentalism
rejects the concept of truth and emphasizes merely the utility of
theories as instruments for explaining and predicting
phenomena.
Another aspect is that philosophy is at least implicitly at the
core of every decision made. The schools of philosophical thought
determine what is a necessity for scientific inquiry to take
place.For instance, there are basic philosophical assumptions
implicit at the foundation of science - namely, 1) that reality is
objective and consistent, 2) that humans have the capacity to
perceive reality accurately, and 3) that rational explanations
exist for elements of the real world. These assumptions are based
in naturalism, critical rationalism, and instrumentalism, within
which science is done. Biologist
Stephen J. Gould maintained that certain philosophical
propositions--i.e., 1) Uniformity of law and 2) uniformity of
processes across time and space--must first be assumed before you
can proceed as a scientist doing science. Gould summarized this
view as follows: "You cannot go to a rocky outcrop and observe
either the constancy of nature's laws nor the working of unknown
processes. It works the other way around." You first assume these
propositions and "then you go to the out crop of rock."
Pseudoscience, fringe science, and junk science
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 "alternative science".
Another term,
junk science, is often
used to describe scientific hypotheses or conclusions which, while
perhaps legitimate in themselves, are believed to be used to
support a position that is seen as not legitimately justified by
the totality of evidence. A variety of commercial advertising,
ranging from hype to fraud, may fall into this category. There also
can be an element of political or ideological bias on all sides of
such debates. Sometimes, research may be characterized as "bad
science", research that is well-intentioned but is seen as
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.
Critiques
Philosophical critiques
Historian
Jacques Barzun termed
science "a
faith as
fanatical as any in
history" and warned against the use of scientific
thought to suppress considerations of
meaning as integral to
human
existence. Many recent thinkers, such as
Carolyn Merchant,
Theodor Adorno and
E. F.
Schumacher considered that the 17th
century
scientific revolution
shifted science from a focus on understanding
nature, or
wisdom, to a focus
on manipulating nature, i.e.
power, and that science's emphasis on
manipulating nature leads it inevitably to manipulate people, as
well. Science's focus on quantitative measures has led to critiques
that it is unable to recognize important qualitative aspects of the
world.
Philosopher of science
Paul K
Feyerabend advanced the idea of
epistemological anarchism, which
holds that there are no useful and exception-free
methodological rules governing the
progress of science or the growth of
knowledge, and that the idea that science
can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is
unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself..
Feyerabend advocates treating science as an
ideology alongside others such as
religion,
magic
and
mythology, and considers the dominance
of science in society
authoritarian
and unjustified.. He also contended (along with
Imre Lakatos) that the
demarcation problem of distinguishing
science from
pseudoscience on
objective grounds is not possible and thus fatal to the notion of
science running according to fixed, universal rules.
Professor
Stanley Aronowitz
scrutinizes science for operating with the presumption that the
only acceptable criticisms of science are those conducted within
the methodological framework that science has set up for itself.
That science insists that only those who have been inducted into
its community, through means of training and credentials, are
qualified to make these criticisms. Aronowitz also alleges that
while scientists consider it absurd that
Fundamentalist Christianity uses
biblical references to bolster their claim that the bible is true,
scientists pull the same tactic by using the tools of science to
settle disputes concerning its own validity.
Psychologist
Carl Jung believed that
though science attempted to understand all of nature, the
experimental method imposed artificial and conditional questions
that evoke equally artificial answers. Jung encouraged, instead of
these 'artificial' methods, empirically testing the world in a
holistic manner. David Parkin compared the
epistemological stance of science to
that of
divination. He suggested that, to
the degree that divination is an epistemologically specific means
of gaining insight into a given question, science itself can be
considered a form of divination that is framed from a Western view
of the nature (and thus possible applications) of knowledge.
Philosopher
Alan Watts criticized science
for operating under a materialist model of the world that he
posited is simply a modified version of the
Abrahamic worldview, that "the universe
is constructed and maintained by a Lawmaker" (commonly identified
as
God or the
Logos). Watts
asserts that during the rise of secularism through the 18th to 20th
century when scientific philosophers got rid of the notion of a
lawmaker they kept the notion of law, and that the idea that the
world is a material machine run by law is a presumption just as
unscientific as religious doctrines that affirm it is a material
machine made and run by a lawmaker.
Philosopher and
polymath Robert
Anton Wilson stated that the instruments used in scientific
investigation produce meaningful answers relevant only to the
instrument, and that there is no objective vantage point from which
science could verify its findings since all findings are relative
to begin with. He also was critical of the scientific community for
being funded largely in part by the military industrial complex and
claimed that because of their strong association with one another
that research and results might be geared towards the expectations
or wants of the military (or whoever is doing the funding). Because
of this, he suggests that the results of scientists could in fact
be tainted by the prejudices of their research sponsors, and are
not entirely scientific.
Several academics have offered critiques concerning
ethics in science. In
Science and Ethics,
for example, the philosopher
Bernard
Rollin examines the relevance of ethics to science, and argues
in favor of making education in ethics part and parcel of
scientific training.
Media perspectives
The
mass media face a number of 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 requires considerable expertise regarding the matter.
Few journalists have real scientific knowledge, and even
beat reporters who know a great deal about
certain scientific issues may know little about other ones they are
suddenly asked to cover.
Politics
Many issues damage the relationship of science to the media and the
use of science and scientific arguments by
politicians. As a very broad generalisation, many
politicians seek certainties and
facts whilst scientists
typically offer probabilities and caveats. However, politicians'
ability to be heard in the
mass media
frequently distorts the scientific understanding by the public.
Examples
in Britain
include the
controversy over the MMR inoculation, and the 1988 forced resignation of
a Government Minister, Edwina Currie
for revealing the high probability that battery eggs were
contaminated with Salmonella.
See also
Notes
- See:
- "The Scientific Revolution". Washington State
University
- Etymology of "science" at Etymology Online. See
also details of the PIE root at American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
4th edition, 2000..
- An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding
- Graduate Education for Computational Science and
Engineering, SIAM Working Group on CSE Education. Retrieved
2008-04-27.
- ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/pubmed/J_Entrez.txt
- Jacques Barzun, Science: The Glorious Entertainment,
Harper and Row: 1964. p. 15. (quote) and Chapters II and XII.
- Fritjof Capra, Uncommon Wisdom, ISBN 0-671-47322-0, p.
213
- Stanley Aronowitz in conversation with Derrick Jensen in
- "Simultaneity and Sequencing in the Oracular Speech of Kenyan
Diviners", p. 185.
- Alan Watts Audio lecture "Myth and Religion: Image of Man" and
"Out Of Your Mind, 1: The Nature of Consciousness: 'Our image of
the world' and 'The myth of the automatic universe'"
- Ibid, pg 20
- Ibid, pg 92
- "1988: Egg industry fury over salmonella
claim", "On This Day," BBC News, December 3, 1988.
References
- Feyerabend, Paul (2005).
Science, history of the philosophy, as cited in of.
Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford.
- Papineau, David. (2005).
Science, problems of the philosophy of., as cited in
- .
Further reading
- Augros, Robert M., Stanciu, George N., "The New Story of
Science: mind and the universe", Lake Bluff, Ill.: Regnery Gateway,
c1984. ISBN 0895268337
- Baxter, Charles
- Cole, K. C., Things your teacher never told you
about science: Nine shocking revelations Newsday, Long Island, New York
, March 23, 1986, pg 21+
- Feynman, Richard "Cargo Cult Science"
- Gopnik, Alison, "Finding Our Inner Scientist", Daedalus, Winter 2004.
- Krige, John, and Dominique Pestre, eds., Science in the
Twentieth Century, Routledge 2003, ISBN 0-415-28606-9
- Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
- MacComas, William F. Rossier School of Education, University of
Southern California. Direct Instruction News. Spring
2002 24–30.
- Levin, Yuval (2008). Imagining
the Future: Science and American Democracy. New York,
Encounter Books. ISBN 1594032092
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