What is science?

Science is a method for approaching questions which attempts to isolate variables, alter them, then examine the effects. The reasoning being that if you can effectively isolate one variable, then nothing else could account for the effect other than the change in that variable. When performed correctly, this allows accurate predictions to be made about how that variable will behave in future, and models to be constructed explaining why the variable does what it does. The problem is that it’s often very difficult to isolate variables, especially when you get outside the realm of human-scale events, or when events are extremely complex, or when the act of observation significantly changes what is being observed. It is also based on reductionist thought, which essentially claims that things can be understood by breaking them down into their constituent parts and studying those parts. Though it has proved useful, there are some serious issues with this line of thought.

” knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method”

Merriam Webster

Science is a view of the world based on physical observation combined with logical inference.

It derives from the Latin scientia, “knowledge.”

I can’t add much to the excellent responses above, but I wanted to ask, what’s wrong with non-scientists talking about science?

@nikipedia @squirbel has a point, though; most of us are parroting. Asimov projects that this will eventually lead to a situation where Science becomes the business of comparing dissertations instead of getting our butts out into the field to do some observing. One of my main gripes about such sciences are prefixed with “evolutionary” – the presumed primitive environment and the organisms within are so dead and gone that we cannot possibly observe them. It becomes, instead an exercise in logical inference.

“Parroting,” as you put it, is an integral part of progress, don’t you think? For the manuscript I’m working on now, I have (so far) 57 references. I’m not going to go back and do all 57 of those experiments just to make sure the authors didn’t screw something up—instead, I “parrot” their findings to support my own argument/analysis. What could be wrong with that?

One of history’s greatest scientists once put it: “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

@nikipedia It’s when Science becomes Parroting that we have a problem.

You don’t need to be a scientist to understand science and the scientific method.

@Nullo, our conclusions about ancient organisms and precursors to life are nevertheless based on detailed observations.

Likewise, we “infer” the mass of a black hole, based on related observations (gravitational drift of neighboring stars). We “infer” that glaciers carved out rock formations thousands of years ago by observing those rock formations today.

That said, surely you are aware that evolution has been directly observed.

@Nullo

Perhaps this cartoon will illustrate the problem with your line of thought.

@Qingu Natural selection has been directly observed, and indeed, emulated by artificial selection. Goo-to-you evolution has not. We can come up with a new subspecies of frog, but that’s not anywhere near the same thing.
@crisw I am aware of the weaknesses, thank you. I stand by my point all the same.

@Nullo, I fail to see your point.

Humans have also not directly observed the complete orbit of Pluto around the sun.

@Nullo – I also fail to see your point.

@Hobbes

People aren’t seeing Nullo’s point because it isn’t much of a point. It’s a common creationist tactic, and, as others have pointed out, it’s completely wrong. We don’t have to witness any event to be sure that, within a very high probability, a theory about that event is correct.

No one alive today also witnessed any event in the Bible, but that doesn’t seem to stop the creationists from believing in it, even though there is far, far more actual evidence that evolution is correct than that the Bible is true.

Duh, God saw what happened in Genesis, and then he told what happened directly to Moses, and Moses wrote it down. Except for the part where Moses dies and everything after that, but… also, faith.

According to Jeph Jacques, Science is a verb now

Discovery how nature works. And the basis for engineering and invention.

It’s a conclusion forming technology that helps me to identify and avoid fallacious conclusions.

@Hobbes It’s that inference isn’t the same thing as observation. A thing observed is more surely the thing that it is, whereas a thing suspected may well be something entirely different.

Science is the art of coming to a conclusion regarding observations made both outside of our personal space and within it.
Then we try to prove our conclusions by testing them.
Once the tests prove our conclusions seem to be truth we then market items manufactured thereby.
Later, newer conclusions made to similar observations may prove to be truer and thus become the newly accepted thought in the realm regarding the new conclusion.

A better mousetrap is then made.