"III.13                     What Is Science?     The sciences are the windows through which philosophy views the world.                                                                        Will Durant (1885-1981) Science is not theistic, nor is it atheistic. It simply does not presuppose religious explanations. Science is concerned with the mechanics, processes, patterns, and history of nature, and not with divinity, the supernatural, or ultimate causes. Moreover, science has no obligation to accommodate anyone's religious beliefs.                                                                   California State Dept. of Education   Science is not a mechanism but a human progress, and not a set of findings but the search for them. Those who think that science is ethically neutral confuse the findings of science, which are, with the activity of science, which is not. . . . . . . . Science is the creation of concepts and their exploration in the facts. It has no other test of the concept than its empirical truth to fact. Truth is the drive at the center of science; it must have the habit of truth, not as a dogma but as a process.                                                                                 J. Bronowski (1908-1974) Introduction The word "science" is derived from the Latin scientia for knowledge, and the meaning of science is as broad as the word knowledge indicates. Taken broadly, science is the progressive improvement of the understanding of the world we live in. In ancient cultures, like Egypt and Mesopotamia, scientific knowledge was fragmented and of a practical nature. Western science started in Greece when freedom of tolerance flourished, and apparently because there was no priestly class of censors. Starting with Thales of Miletus in the 6th century BCE, the Greek natural philosophers, were the first to seek fundamental explanations and organize scientific knowledge in a rational framework.      Modern science took off with Galileo (1564-1642) in the 17th century. He was the first to use the ancient logic of deduction and induction together with planned experiments to verify his hypothetical predictions. With him, and the works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a pattern of basic rules and assumptions, that is, a method of inquiry was attached to doing science.       "Science is organized common sense" and open ended so that it can systematically corrects its errors. It applies to anything within the range of our experiences. Hence, science strives to understand all aspects of the universe and the human condition.   A.  Science is a system for acquiring knowledge as justified         true belief through scientific and critical thinking that is based on: Empiricism which relies on evidence from the five senses as in observations and experiments. It assumes that there is some underlying order in the universe. Events, whether in atoms or human beings, are not accidental but follow regularities or patterns that can be generalized. In philosophy, empiricism is the claim that sensory experience is the only source of informative knowledge about the real world. Logical reasoning which discloses what follows from what. Thus it allows valid inferences from, for example, empirical evidence. The principle of parsimony, also known as Ockham's (Occam) razor. It demands that causes are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. It is the philosophical or scientific principle according to which the best explanation of an event is the one that is accurate and simplest, that is, using the fewest assumptions or hypotheses. It applies to all systems of thought, worldviews, religions, etc. Also, nature works by this principle as Isaac Newton (1642-1727) observed: "Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will do." Reductionism, the application of Ockham's razor, is a primary procedure of all sciences. It attempts to explain a multitude of apparently distinct phenomena in terms of a few underlying principles that are accurate. For instance, Newton's theory of gravity explains and reduces the many strange movements of the planets, stars, and galaxies to a single force. Search for the simplest accurate theory that explains all the data. This is in contrast to "greedy reductionism" which simplifies but does no longer explain all the data. For example, creationism, intelligent design theory, and many supernatural explanations fall in this category. Skepticism or doubt because informative and predictive knowledge gathered by science is not absolutely true but only probably so. Hence, all knowledge is subject to further scrutiny and revision if new evidence requires it. There are no dogmas in science. Seeking the "Truth" that is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. "Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough." Ibn al-Haytham (965–1039), a pioneer of scientific method. B.  Science has an ever-expanding organized body of informative and predictive knowledge. Accumulated over many centuries and continually updated, science accepts nothing as true, that is, confirmed, unless empirical evidence and observation suggests that the data or facts are strongly and consistently verified as probable true. For this reason, science is considered by many the best accredited provider of reliable knowledge. For a listing of the various sciences see Division of Knowledge by Disciplines. Note: Natural (physical) laws, e.g., Einstein's formula, E=mc2, are relatively simple and unchanging because they merely observe that something occurs. By contrast, scientific theories are complex because they try to explain why and how something occurs. Moreover, theories must make testable predictions to confirm their validity.