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Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. [1] [2] Modern science is typically divided into two or three major branches: [3] the natural sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, and biology), which study the physical world; and the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which ...
Methodological reductionism: the scientific attempt to provide an explanation in terms of ever-smaller entities. Theory reductionism: the suggestion that a newer theory does not replace or absorb an older one, but reduces it to more basic terms. Theory reduction itself is divisible into three parts: translation, derivation, and explanation. [4]
A similar definition appeared more recently in David Pingree's study of early science: "Science is a systematic explanation of perceived or imaginary phenomena, or else is based on such an explanation. Mathematics finds a place in science only as one of the symbolical languages in which scientific explanations may be expressed."
The philosopher Wesley C. Salmon described scientific inquiry: The search for scientific knowledge ends far back into antiquity. At some point in the past, at least by the time of Aristotle, philosophers recognized that a fundamental distinction should be drawn between two kinds of scientific knowledge—roughly, knowledge that and knowledge why.
A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess or thought. If a hypothesis is repeatedly independently demonstrated by experiment to be true, it becomes a scientific theory.
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory".
The English word theory derives from a technical term in philosophy in Ancient Greek.As an everyday word, theoria, θεωρία, meant "looking at, viewing, beholding", but in more technical contexts it came to refer to contemplative or speculative understandings of natural things, such as those of natural philosophers, as opposed to more practical ways of knowing things, like that of skilled ...
Scientism is the belief that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality. [1] [2]While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientists", some scholars, as well as political and religious leaders, have also adopted it as a pejorative term with the meaning "an exaggerated ...