# What science is

Science is a robust branch of metaphysics that specializes in the knowable, known, and potentially knowable, with ventures into [the unknown](unknown.md) focusing heavily on what is already known.

Science starts with what people consider common sense, then develops as a [story](stories.md) to clarify whether that [sense](mind-feelings.md) is accurate.

The scientific method is an established procedure designed to remove individual [bias](mind-bias.md):

1. Ask a question.
   - Someone must be able to test and observe that question's answer.
   - This question comes from a [desire](purpose.md) to discover [facts](reality.md), but the rest of the steps are a [story](stories.md) that concludes with communicating the findings.
2. Do background research.
   - Investigate any existing discoveries from publications, past data, wikis, anecdotes, and personal experiences.
   - Good scientists work hard to suspend *all* [judgment](understanding-certainty.md) as they thoroughly sift through the information, though [they can never be entirely precise](mind-bias.md).
3. Build an educated guess (i.e., a "hypothesis").
   - It doesn't have to make sense, but must be [logical](logic.md).
4. Test that guess with an experiment.
   - All experiments require identifying [numbers](math.md) (quantitative) or [qualities](values.md) (qualitative).
   - Whenever possible, have a "control" and "test" group to compare differences.
   - Sometimes, the experiments are merely focused observations.
5. Analyze the data from the experiment, then conclude something.
   - Break the information into [tables, charts, and graphs](data-viz.md) to find [patterns](symbols.md), a bit like [the creative process](mind-creativity-how.md).
   - Keep many notes about how you got the data so anyone else can get the same results if they reproduce your conditions ("reproducibility").
   - The conclusion should be so blatantly obvious that any other sane person with the same evidence will infer the same conclusion.
6. [Communicate](people-conversation.md) the results and get feedback.
   - The communication step is *loaded* with [politics](power.md) and [bias](image.md) from [human nature](humanity.md), though many in the scientific community [believe](trust.md) the system is self-correcting.
   - If the results diverge from [convention or tradition](habits.md), the feedback will likely create [controversy](people-conflicts.md).
   - Often, editing the [presentation](stories.md) of the scientific paper can advance the controversial result through [virtue signaling](stories-storytellers.md) the community's [pre-existing beliefs](trust.md).

## Science has limits

Science is a method, so it can give answers to questions, but never *provides* those questions. Instead, the questions come from the [curiosity](purpose.md) of people wishing to know, [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md) of what would happen if they *don't* know, or some form of personal gain through the [publishing process](stories-storytellers.md).

All scientific theories can only represent 2 possibilities:

1. Theories known to be wrong, since they were sufficiently tested and adequately rejected.
2. Theories that haven't been affirmed as wrong yet, not falsified yet, but are exposed to the possibility of being wrong.

It's impossible to use science to [deductively](logic.md) affirm something as right or true, simply because humanity cannot perceive all [reality](reality.md). We can can only [inductively deduce](logic.md) reality with a margin of error, with the consequences being readily apparent but the causes always evading us.

Metaphysics concerns itself with *everything* that exists, but scientific thinking can only localize itself strictly to [provable](understanding-certainty.md) things. Without [philosophy](philosophy.md) or [theology](religion.md), everything beyond the provable is murky conjecture:

- Where the universe came from
- How life exists
- [What happens after we die](religion.md)
- Most of the "social sciences" surrounding [psychology](humanity.md), [economics](economics.md), and [politics](groups-large.md)
- Whether a [soul](humanity.md) exists

Even within the realm of [known things](understanding-certainty.md), a conversation with a small child will reveal *many* obvious things outside the scope of science.

This doesn't mean non-science "science" doesn't have its merits. The emphasis on observation means it won't typically stray as far from the truth compared to most [post-modern philosophical frameworks](philosophy.md), but [institutional decay](mgmt-badsystems.md) is just as likely.

Further, to answer every presently obvious question would yield many more beyond them, and the full breadth of scientific knowledge will never, *ever* end until either our [desire to understand](understanding.md) ceases or we've mastered all aspects of the universe.

[Scientism](https://trendless.tech/scientism/) is a unique philosophy that takes science farther than [its function](purpose.md) permits.

Further, [social fashions](trends.md) will always sway scientific values dramatically, mostly because very intelligent people can often have [absolutely no common sense](https://gainedin.site/idiot/).

## The philosophy of science

One important component representative in all the sciences is that there are two strangely competing forces always at work:

- Everything is maintaining a type of stasis, with constant negative feedback loops that self-correct anything too far out of range.
- Everything in the universe is decaying at a relatively predictable rate.

For it to qualify as [legitimate science](science.md), it must be rigorous, reproducible, and open.

[The formal sciences](science-formal.md) are philosophical abstractions:

- [Logic](logic.md)
- Mathematics ([algebra](math-algebra.md), [statistics](math-stat.md), [calculus](math-calc.md), et al.)
- Decisions theory (aka [game theory](math-gametheory.md))

These are more philosophy than science, but they're so well-ordered that they can certainly exist as being provable with the scientific method.

## The accepted domains of science

There are *many* scientific disciplines, which are all subdivisions of the broad philosophical classification of [metaphysics](reality.md).

Regarding what people *typically* think of with the word "science", it broadly classifies into the physical and life sciences, with the social sciences thrown in as a somewhat "soft science" and the applied sciences actually making the sciences directly [useful](purpose.md).

In practice, everything is absurdly simple from one perspective, but is vastly complicated in its implementation. This includes [science itself](science.md).

The sciences end up combining on top of each other:

- [Physics](science-physics.md) is the base.
- Specific interactions between elements in physics becomes [Chemistry](science-chemistry.md).
- The physical world around us, along with its physical interactions, is [Earth Science](science-earth.md).
  - Earth science's subdivisions as [Geology](science-earth-land.md), [Oceanography](science-earth-ocean.md), and [Meteorology](science-earth-weather.md).
- Everything about physics that isn't earth science is [Astronomy](science-space.md).
- Specific chemistry pertaining to life is [Biochemistry](science-life-biochem.md), itself a subdomain of [Biology](science-life.md)
  - Biochemistry's subdivisions as [Microbiology](science-life-micro.md), [Botany](science-life-plants.md), and [Zoology](science-life-animals.md).
  - The [Social Sciences](science-social.md) are subdivisions of biochemistry regarding human behavior.
- Earth science as applied to biochemistry is [Ecology](science-ecology.md).

All of the above sciences apply to the world around us, and that application naturally merges into the domain of [engineering](engineering.md).

- The formal sciences work to create:
  - Data and information science, which blurs heavily with [computer science](computers.md)
  - Systems theory, which is essentially the [corporate](groups-large.md) explanation for all the scientific information
- Physical and life sciences end up creating, among others:
  - [Engineering](engineering.md)
  - [Agricultural science](horticulture.md)
  - Almost the entire [medical industry](body-firstaid.md)
  - [Health sciences](body-4_health.md)
- Social sciences build out, among others:
  - [Business administration](mgmt-1_why.md)
  - [Jurisprudence](legal-doctrines.md)
  - [Pedagogy](understanding.md)

Further reading:

- [Open, rigorous and reproducible research: A practitioner's handbook](https://stanforddatascience.github.io/best-practices/index.html)