What Science Is.

[jaimehlers]

This is an attempt to describe science in a way that can easily be understood by laymen who have no interest in the subject, yet is straightforward enough to not be misunderstood.

Science is like exploring a new (or not-so-new) land.  It's a process of discovering more and more about that land, so that we can find out useful things about it.  It is letting what is actually there, in that land, tell us about it.  It is a truly vast land, and we could spend thousands of generations exploring it and still not know everything there is to know about it.  Naturally, sometimes we get things wrong about it and make mistakes.  Yet, when we make those mistakes, we go back and figure out what we messed up on and then use that to discover what might really be going on.

It is not a body of facts.  It is not a belief system.  It is not something we can file and forget.  It is, simply, the effort to discover and understand reality on its own terms, rather than trying to impose our imaginations on it.

[ParkingPlaces]

Science is also a body of knowledge that we build upon. Scientists 100 and 200 and 300 years ago often had very incomplete knowledge about the world of science, but physics and chemistry and biology and such could not be where they is today without the early efforts of those pioneers.

Science started out as baby steps. Now we're taking huge ones. A hundred years from now they will be even larger. We'll never know all of the 'land', as jaimehlers put it. But we'll be mapping our knowledge base and learning more every day, every month, every year, every decade.

[Turbo SS]

Science is make believe
-Olivianus