Reshaping the Definition of Science: Will it Become Necessary?

Science has been contributing significantly to our lives since the 14th century through the production of knowledge. The application of the latter in real life allowed longer and healthier life, medicine to cure our diseases, transportation, food, etc. Witnessing its beauty throughout history is enough to admire this magnificent word and explore it further.

“I am among those who think that science has great beauty.” — Marie Curie

Being extremely fascinating and with the current progress, we may wonder how far can Science reach to answer all our questions and how much knowledge can it produce? In this article, I discuss this aspect throughout a critical review of the modern definition of Science.

History

The word Science originates from the Latin word Scientia, which means knowledge or experience. When googling for its history, one can easily see that defining Science was, and is still and will probably remain, very complex. When talking about knowledge, one perceives that Science is a huge concept. So huge that coining a definition has been a source of problem and debate. Indeed, coining a definition of Science leads to either a finite or infinite set of activities belonging to it. In the former case, many may argue that their activities are scientific. In the latter case, anyone can claim that she/he is doing Science. And this is probably, the complex trade-off faced by the ones who tried defining science. This will lead to either encompassing or excluding fields of study. Some attempts to define science are as follows:

“Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.” — Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), English philosopher, author.

“Science is simply common sense at its best that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.” — Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), English biologist.

“In essence, science is a perpetual search for an intelligent and integrated comprehension of the world we live in.” — Cornelius Bernardus Van Niel (1897–1985), U. S. microbiologist.

The Modern Definition

As of today, Science is defined as being:

“A systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world.”

Being passionate about Science, I have been witnessing that this definition is not only dominant in textbooks but also in discussions and debates, especially on social networks. People are referring a lot to the scientific method in all “scientific” discussions making the progress usually difficult. For instance, whenever an exciting topic, outside the current definition boundaries, is discussed, several make usage of the scientific method as a shelter. This stops them from pushing thinking further and observing beyond the current state of methods and processes. My concern with such a definition is the word “testable”. The latter bounds significantly the horizon of knowledge production. In fact, in a context where testing is “unreachable” or “impossible”, we cannot produce any knowledge. Here, we may wonder whether testing is enough to generate all the knowledge we need to understand life?

The Strengths of the Current Definition

As mentioned early in this article, the current definition has led to many achievements. When the scientific method is applicable, the results are fascinating. Indeed, in such a case, any observation ignites question(s), which generates hypotheses. Then, the latter are experimented leading to the conclusion(s). Given the clarity of accomplishments and the ease of identifying many of them, it is sufficient to highlight that when an activity belongs to the bounded definition of science, then the current definition is very suitable, powerful, and remarkable.

The Weaknesses of the Current Definition

Once we move outside the bounded definition, things get complicated. I noticed such complexity when I saw attempts to understand humans’ consciousness for artificial intelligence. It is also the case when talking about all unknown mysteries like the beforelife, soul, death, afterlife, etc. I do claim that these mysteries are at least as important to us as all the tangible knowledge applicable to our daily life. Indeed, given our thinking and observation abilities, we should seek more than just living for +/-60 years within the +/-60 years solely and wonder about the before and after boundaries. What are we doing on this planet in such a huge space? How are we supposed to behave and why? Where do we come from and where are we going? These are some of the fascinating questions that one may think of. Still, the current definition of science makes it difficult to seek answers for them collectively. That’s why I also believe that labeling the scientific method as being deductive is a hindrance to humans’ understanding of life despite all the achievements.

Future Perspective

While being extremely grateful to live in this exciting era where enough historical data is available and where we have achieved several great things, I wonder whether we will need to reshape the definition of Science to encompass a large space of activities than the current one. Such a tactic may be great and may allow us to seek higher and go towards more important questions that have remained unanswered by the current definition and the previous ones. Of course, even if I doubt it, I will be very happy to see the scientific method providing us with knowledge about consciousness for instance.

The definition of Science has been fascinating me a lot since a few years ago. I believe it deserves more attention, more courage, and more passion to challenge the current state. In the end, challenging our methodologies and processes is a great exercise to evaluate how far we have gone, where we have been stuck, and whether there is an opportunity to seek higher. As the first image of this article, if a fish jumps from an aquarium to a sea (a larger aquarium), it will swim farther, observe more, and discover more.

This is an interesting topic where all of us are either directly or indirectly involved. Right? I am looking forward to hearing your ideas and opinions :-).