What is science?

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

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Philosophy Explorer
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What is science?

Post by Philosophy Explorer »

Is it about testable hypotheses? Organized bodies of knowledge? Systematic investigations of the natural world? Knowing all we can know about the universe? Rules and formulas?

Is it also about knowing about the limitations of science? For example where would science stop and religion begin or can the two blend somehow? Is there a science of the mind? Is psychology a pseudoscience or is there hope of it becoming a true science?

Again what is science?

PhilX
Dubious
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Re: What is science?

Post by Dubious »

Philosophy Explorer wrote: Sun Jul 02, 2017 3:46 am Is it about testable hypotheses? Organized bodies of knowledge? Systematic investigations of the natural world? Knowing all we can know about the universe? Rules and formulas?

Is it also about knowing about the limitations of science? For example where would science stop and religion begin or can the two blend somehow? Is there a science of the mind? Is psychology a pseudoscience or is there hope of it becoming a true science?

Again what is science?

PhilX
Anything which adds to the Mind account by way of information initiating its own paths toward discovery. Best to leave religion out of it entirely. It's a dead end of no value to the future. It only took two thousand years to disclose what nonsense it all amounts to. Islam is the current outstanding example of what brain-dead medievalism looks like.

We also don't have to be concerned with the "limitations of science"; we just have to do science for now which in due course will make its limitations apparent. We're not yet sophisticated enough to speculate on its limitations...if such there actually are, but if so, science itself must reveal it.
surreptitious57
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Re: What is science?

Post by surreptitious57 »

The word science is derived from the Latin scientia that means to know so science is a means of understanding the natural world and for that the scientific method is employed. The major components of it are experimentation and observation and inter subjectivity and potential falsification and peer review. Science is primarily an inductive discipline and so it uses evidence to determine the probable truth value of testable hypotheses
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Necromancer
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Re: What is science?

Post by Necromancer »

Short: science is limited by what can be explained by HDM, Hypothetico-Deductive Method. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypotheti ... tive_model. Religion is all the beliefs beyond science. However, the border between religious belief and science is not sharp and a number of questions are still up in the air.

:)
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