science definition

science definition

Understanding the Nature and Significance of Science

1. Introduction to Science

Science is a highly developed form of the human activity traditionally termed as exploration or inquiry. Consequently, any discussion of what science is should include an account of the nature of knowledge produced through this inquiry, who produces it, how social and intellectual organization affect it, and how reorganizations can enhance or inhibit it.

The term “science” is used in many ways and its meaning is often ambiguous. The word “science” is derived from a Latin verb meaning “to know”. A number of definitions of science have been proposed, but in general agreement, the best definition would be that science is a search for knowledge, in the form of laws, theories, and principles about the physical or natural world, and the active quest for new information. Science is comprehensive: it has a broad scope and many kinds of activities are included.

2. Key Characteristics of Science

Merton’s original set of four characteristics is perhaps the most famous of all conceptualizations of the norms of science. The essence of Merton’s treatment of them was that the key norms of science promote behaviors helpful to both the development and the wider application of knowledge.

What are the most important characteristics of science? How do these characteristics influence both the direction of scientific research and its impact? These issues are central to understanding the nature of science and identifying the status of scientific knowledge and the means by which truth and falsehood may be distinguished. Many terms have been proposed to capture the most important characteristics of how science is conducted and research results. Several of the most widely cited lists – those of Merton, Ziman, and Popper, Kuhn, and Shapere – are enumerated below, along with a more recent list of characteristics proposed by Newell and Lee.

3. The Scientific Method and Its Components

Inductive reasoning, one of the cornerstones of the scientific method, allows us to generalize about nature and its laws. It allows scientists to predict how a new specimen will behave, how another planet might appear, or how a more complicated sentence in a language of which they only know a few sentences might sound when spoken. Such predictions are based upon an observation of a large number of specimens under the specific conditions under which the predictions are being made, and made from these observations of the properties and behavior of the limited number of “type” of these specimens. In preparation for these experiments or observations, scientists also make formal descriptions and definitions of the nature and the properties of such a class of specimens or the nature of the class of events from which such a series of deductions may be made, which defines the class involved and how the class is to be investigated.

The scientific method generally involves two interacting processes: induction and deduction. Induction occurs when a scientist makes conclusions about a class of events or phenomena based upon a limited number of observations, and deduction occurs when a scientist forms a hypothesis or theory from a generalization and makes deductions in specific instances or predictions. The scientific method involves applications of inductive reasoning to form hypotheses, or generalizations of what might be expected to occur in specific instances, applications of deductive reasoning to make predictions based upon these hypotheses, careful experiments, observations, or tests to validate these predictions, and the modifications of the hypotheses and the making of new predictions based upon the validation.

4. The Role of Science in Society

The role of science in society is an important way of understanding its nature and significance. Those who pursue a technology of science need to meet the needs of our society. It is for this, above all, that they will be judged by their contemporaries and by history. What, then, are the demands of our society upon science? In what other ways does science meet these demands? What are the other functions of science in our world of social order that are not so widely appreciated? And, I might also ask, what are the other needs of scientists and of the social order in which their work is done? What are the needs of the society upon the social order generated by scientific activity? In other words, what are the needs of science upon society?

While science is an undoubted element in the strength of our society, it has to be done in terms of our society’s overall objectives and values. One consideration is the question of setting priorities for governmental support of research, an overt example of the problem being the apportionment between basic and applied research. Some of the problems which come under this heading are old and some are new. But the immediacy of these problems is indicated by the increasing details in which they are being discussed in our society. It would be foolish for the scientific community to repudiate its responsibilities in this respect. Since much of the financial support for fundamental scientific research comes from the governmental sector, the scientific and lay communities must join in the establishment of a research policy which effectively harmonizes these mutually beneficial functions.

5. Ethical Considerations in Scientific Research

The moral implications of such research are presently of modest consideration, in terms of the specific application of developing and implementing the relevant protocols. Specific ethical considerations for the researcher or a scientific team follow at a variety of points as the detailed creative process unfolds. Once the requisite knowledge and specific techniques are developed in the area of the natural sciences, a moral issue is a measure of the extent of the researcher’s work that may ultimately cause more harm than good; that is, actions of a political or national, or global, or cultural nature are required to control what else may be done with the conscientization.

Scientific research invariably reveals that the complex systems or phenomena investigated are not purely arbitrary; rather, they have a definite form or structure, discernible characteristics, and are constrained by known laws of nature. In the area of the natural sciences – that is, the study of objects and phenomena derived from the tangible or external dimension of reality – the task of the scientist is to develop the appropriate protocols which permit us to verify or investigate these structures, characteristics, and mechanisms and to identify and quantify the causally effective components. Thus, when a technician is employed to develop scientific knowledge, the requirements for description must necessarily be established, as well as any relevant constraints for the proper solution of problems, which may integrate further understanding.