The Definition Of Science: What Is Science?

What is science?
There are many definitions of science currently in use. These definitions share some basic similarities but can be contradictory as well depending on an individual’s personal beliefs and values (I will get back to this topic in my value of science paragraph). However, the most common statement is that “science is trying to explain observed phenomena to gather knowledge about how the world works” (Klemke et al. 1988; Ziman 1988, 2001). In short, the scientist wonders why the world is the way it is, and not a different way and observes nature in a particular condition and documenting the findings, to gain knowledge or resolve a problem. I partially disagree with this overly simplified definition of science. In my opinion, I do not think that an endeavor qualifies as science just because it gathers knowledge about how the world works. The method by which we gather this knowledge and the ability of the knowledge to accurately explain why things work the ways they do are equally important. Moreover, with science we are trying to bring an order into, a chaotic world. With giving things names we take the mystery out of it and it makes it less scary for us. Also, this gained knowledge needs to be continually compared to the real world to test and improve its accuracy and demonstrate its explanatory power (Popper 1988). I agree with Popper (1988), who stated that only those propositions that research may prove false should be considered as scientific (the principle of falsification). That means that if you disprove an idea, it never can be the truth. and of course by continually trying and failing to falsify something you build support for it. For example, I am working with variation of abiotic factors in intertidal tide...

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...bservation-theory-hypothesis- hypothesis testing, is an important tool that gives us the potential to create a good background for discussions and the ability to predict, describe, or explain how the world works, which is one of the key goals of science (Klemke et al. 1988).If knowledge is obtained through the scientific method, it is more likely that it has scientific merit, because it had to go through different stages of testing for correctness.
In my opinion, only scientists can give reliable answers to empirical questions because they use the scientific method to find them. Science is not just knowledge; it is also the method that you use to prove that the gathered knowledge closely approximates reality. This leads me to the answer that to separate science and non-science, you must ensure that the knowledge you gather comes from an objective, testable method.