WHAT IS SCIENCE?

Every person has some idea about what science is, and we all have the slightest passing familiarity with the world of science. Not often does a week go by without a new scientific study or innovation being reported in the media. "New cure found for etc, etc" and "Scientists spot gene tied to addiction" are the headlines from two recent stories on the internet.

Can science be defined by its theme? Science investigates natural occurrence of every imaginable sort -- from the physical to the biological to the social. Scientists learn everything from events happening at the time of the formation of the universe to the stages of human intellectual and emotional growth to the wandering patterns of butterflies. Judging by its subject matter, then, science is the study of very nearly all.

Then can science be defined by looking at the range of activities scientists do.

An evocative definition was said to be that science is what is "accepted by the scientific community" and is "what scientists do." The understandable inference of this description is that, in a free society, information does not necessitate the printing of legislation in order to become science. The essential characteristics are:

• It is directed by natural law;
• It has to be descriptive by reference to natural law;
• It is testable versus the empirical world;
• Its conclusions are tentative
• It is falsifiable

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