What is science?

Science is a systematic process to create or increase our knowledge about the universe, in the form of explanations and predictions, with ultimate aims of understanding, influence or forms of control.

Knowledge is harder to define, and perhaps has to be seen as an irreducible and not fully definable basic concept. It has to do with increased familiarity with or understanding of something. Science only deserves the name if there is something public, tending towards universal about it. If it is purely private, it isn't (yet) science. I think it works better to use the word science more for the process than for the outcome or product, and to only call the latter knowledge.

To me these are the basics that can and need to be said about science. You can become more specific, but when you do, you are likely to exclude parts of scientific activity that many people would like to continue to be included. It also brings out the likely universality of the wish for and the activity of science, and makes clear that it is a human activity, not restricted to universities, and not the prerogative of academics or "experts".

Research

"Research" is in practical terms now overlapping almost completely with science, especially when science is defined as process, and if science includes social science. This is how I use the terms.

There has been, and will continue to be, a huge amount of study, thought, publication and controversy around the nature of science, what science "really" is, and how it should be conducted. Key terms that refer to the thinking about this are "philosophy of science", "methodology", "the scientific method", and, as a philosophical term, "epistemology".

n the last and this centuries, there has been a reaction against and shift from the more naive ideas about science, which implied that science was, or at its best could be, an immediate and reliable observation of nature ("empiricism"), or at least was based on human reason ("rationalism"), and in some way allowed you to arrive at "truth".

Limitations of science

A more and more generally held view, which I share, is that truth and certainty are not available, and that a number of qualifications have to be kept in mind:

• Science cannot escape being based on values and being political, as especially demonstrated in critical theory (e.g. Habermas). Or in the alternative formulation from Foucault, the knowledge related to or the product of science is inextricably connected with and produced by the workings of power.
• Science is context-dependent, and in particular depends on the scientists who "do" the science, and the time and culture in which they conduct research.
• All knowledge is context-dependent.
• The only knowledge that can be obtained is a likelihood, a probability or plausibility. Bayesians extend this to the idea hat all probability is subjective (which somewhat undermines the ideal of interpersonal agreement about the outcomes of science).
• Nothing can be observed without the observer or the observation affecting what is observed.
• Observations depend on a framework and on a theory (this goes back to Kant). Observation free from theory does not exist. And perhaps substitute "model" for "theory". 

One key additional view is that these limitations apply just as much to natural sciences as to social sciences.

Instrumentalism

Another of the multiple perspectives that help to make sense of science is that of instrumentalism, which states that "truth" or relationship to (a?) "reality" don't matter, but that the only important thing is whether a method or a particular process helps, works, produces results, can make effective predictions, etc. More practically helpful than endless disputes about methodology, I think!

Social constructionism and postmodernism

One step beyond all this is the following set of ideas:

• the whole scientific project is no less of an ideology than religion, mythology, or certain cultural systems (Feyerabend)
• all of knowledge, and everything we call truth or reality, is a social construction
• science is a grand or meta-narrative, and like all others, has come to an end (postmodernism)

Though it is difficult to be certain of this (and in a way my claim of certainty would be inconsistent!), I have much sympathy with these ideas - although they are not so easy to integrate with a continued respect for the normal scientific method, statistics, randomised trials, etc.

ertainly they are much more convincing to me than the opposite end of the spectrum, occupied by (Enlightenment-based) positivism and scientism (believing that science is everything, and especially that a naive conception of the methods of the natural sciences can be applied to every problem in the world). I am happy to extend these strictures to natural sciences, too.

Don't give up on science!

Despite these final ideas, which always run the risk of degenerating into too complete versions of relativism and solipsism, it is good to keep hold of the contrast that there has been historically between science and all other systems based on authority, either human or divine, or forms of religion and ideology. Despite Feyerabend, I believe that there is a realistic view of history that suggests a positive place for science in human history and development which I am loath to abandon.

And lest I be misunderstood, I believe that traditional quantitative research, statistical evaluation of data, observation, experiment, randomised controlled trials, and the use of logic for reasoning have and should continue to have a major place in all science, including the social sciences. Together with other methods!

Wikipedia has a number of good to excellent entries in this field, which I have consulted when writing this. This blog is a rather long blog, but the wikipedia entries are much longer! If you want, consider running through the entries on science, social science, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and social research ....

And here is a recent blog from Prof. Keith Laws, that shows science in action, discussing the problem of non-publication of negative (disappointing) findings in many journals. This led to quite a bit of discussion, both in the comments and the blogosphere.

And finally, these are links to two of my other science blogs, one with more details about what science is, the other about the status of psychology and psychotherapy.