What is science?

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What is science

The words ‘science’ and ‘scientist’ are surprisingly modern inventions. The word ‘scientist’ was coined by the Victorian polymath William Whewell, who used it in the Quarterly Review in March 1834. The Americans accepted and used the word almost immediately, and by the end of the century it was also popular in Britain

The word ‘science’ in the English-speaking world was not always so designated. The Oxford English Dictionary proffers the following homophones: Sienz, ciens, cience, siens, syence, syense, scyence, scyense, scyens, science, sciens, and scians

All derived from the Latin scientia, which mean ‘knowledge’, and it supplanted other terms such as"natural philosopher

But no one construes “science” merely as knowledge. It is thought of rather as knowledge hard won, in which we have much more confidence than we have in opinion, hearsay, or popular sayings

The history of the word and the changes in its meanings need to be studied carefully to be able to distinguish between the implied different meanings and be able to differentiate between science, knowledge, and information

Here is a selection of quotations about Science

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S1) Science is organized knowledge
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher


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S2) Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition

Adam Smith ( 1723-1790), Scottish economist

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S3) Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you do not know

Bertrand Russell (1892-1970), English philosopher

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S4) Science is a series of judgments, revised without ceasing
Pierre Emile Duclaux (1840-1904), French bacteriologist

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S5) Science is the desire to know causes
William Hazlitt ( 1778-1830), English essayist

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S6) Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another
Thomas Hobbes ( 1588-1679), English philosopher


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S7) Science is an imaginative adventure of the mind seeking truth in a world of mystery
Cyril Herman Hinshelwood ( 1897-1967), English Chemist

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S8) Science is a great game. It is inspiring and refreshing. The playing field is the universe itself
Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898-1988), American physicist

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S9) Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature

Jacob Bronowski(1908-1974), British scientist and author

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S10) The essence of science is to ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to a pertinent answer
Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974), British scientist and author

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S11) In essence, science is perpetual search for an intelligent and integrated comprehension of the world we live in

Cornelius Van Neil (1897-1985), American microbiologist

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S12) The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he is one who asks the write questions
Claude Levi-Strauss (November 1908 – October 2009) , French anthropologist

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S13) Truth in science can best be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one
Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989), Austrian zoologist

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S14) Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary

Albert Einstein (1979-1955), German physicist

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S15) Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the
material world

Richard Dawkins (1941- ), English biologist

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S16) Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit; and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman’s cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95), English biologist

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S17) Science is a body of useful and practical knowledge and a method of obtaining it

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S18) Science is a branch of pure learning which aims at intellectual satisfaction. But
it is not the only branch of learning, and we must ask next what it is that distinguishes science from other branches. Is the distinction in the subject-matter that it studies it, or in the manner in which it studies it, or both together, or possibly, something quite different?t

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S19) The great development of science of the 19th century is connected with its divorce from philosophy; and the changes are so great that it is perhaps hardly right to regard the science of today as the same thing as the science before that century

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S20) Science is an attempt to understand nature by asking questions and trying to face the facts of things , no matter where they may lead

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S21) Science has always treated its laws as mathematical abstraction, description after the fact, rather than laws in the judicial sense that determine and direct behavior

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S22) Science is not static. Science is exploding exponentially all around us. If you count the number of scientific articles being published, you will find that the sheer volume of science doubles every decade or so. Innovation and discovery are changing the entire economic, political, and social landscape

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S23) Science discovers patterns, symmetries, and mathematical laws to interconnect a multiplicity of individual events. In order to uncover the laws, regularities, and pattern of nature, it is necessary first to abstract phenomena from the real world and consider laws in isolation from the contingencies of everyday life

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S24) Science moves forward whenever we can take something that was once invisible and make it visible

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S25) Scientific inquiry often begins with a question

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S26) Science is not democratic in the sense that we all get together and vote on the right answer.fficeffice" />>>

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S27) Science consists of a two-way movement of confirmation and falsification

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S28) Science is dedicated to seeing any fact as it is, and being open to free communication with regard not only to the fact itself, but also to the point of view from which it is interpreted

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S29) Science acknowledges any fact and any point of view as it actually is whether one likes it or not

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S30) Classical science assumes that certainty and predictability had become associated with regularity, clockwork, and ability to strip away inessentials in order to describe apparently complex phenomena in terms of simple mechanical models

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S31) While science has conventionally accepted that its laws are purely descriptive in nature, it is plausible that behind the phenomena of the material world lies a generative and formative order called the objective intelligence

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S32) Science requires that a phenomenon be reliably produced in different laboratories for it to be accepted as genuine. No single experiment, or no set of experiments carried out in one laboratory can ever stand as definitive evidence

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S33) Science has developed an ever increasing tendency to fragment knowledge and experience into various areas of specializations

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S34) While science has an awesome power to predict and control , it is also clear that its essential fragmentation of nature is no longer able to address all the major problems that face the world today

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S35) The essential nature of science is the fragmentation. The fragmentation of science comes about when a system is taken to be collection of units that belong apart and are not internally related in a deeper sense, and in many cases the more global considerations tend to be lost in details

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S36) Present Science has little to say about the way in which people live their daily lives; enter into relationships; experience love, hate, birth, and death; give value to the world; and respond to new situations in creative ways

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S37) Science is not equivalent to knowledge, it is thought of rather as knowledge hard won in which we have much more confidence than we have in opinion, hearsay, or popular sayings. The history of the word "science" and the changes in its meanings need to be studied carefully to be able to distinguish between the implied different meanings and be able to differentiate between science, knowledge, and information

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S38) The results of science are replicable. This requirement of replicability applies to all fields of science. That means no single experiment or no set of experiments carried out in one laboratory, can ever stand as definitive evidence. Science requires that a phenomenon be reliably produced in different laboratories , i.e. independent of the experimenter, for it to be accepted as genuine

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S39) The main element of science is the scientific method. The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature has't misled you into thinking you know something and you actually don't know