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Outline of science

Overview of and topical guide to science From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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The following outline is provided as a topical overview of science; the discipline of science is defined as both the systematic effort of acquiring knowledge through observation, experimentation and reasoning, and the body of knowledge thus acquired, the word "science" derives from the Latin word scientia meaning knowledge. A practitioner of science is called a "scientist". Modern science respects objective logical reasoning, and follows a set of core procedures or rules to determine the nature and underlying natural laws of all things, with a scope encompassing the entire universe. These procedures, or rules, are known as the scientific method.

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General concepts

Further information: Scientific terminology and Category:Glossaries of science
  • Classification is the use of categories to organize and describe individual subjects. This can be done descriptively to explain existing differences or prescriptively to create groups in a way that is useful.[1]
  • Consilience is the process in which distinct findings can produce novel conclusions when considered together.[2]
  • Demarcation is the division of scientific and non-scientific ideas, and the resulting dispute over how to divide them.[3] Different fields of study may be evaluated on the level of experimental rigor, how much they engage in abstraction, how closely related they are with the humanities, or other qualities.[4]
  • Descriptive and normative science are contrasting methods to explain scientific ideas. Descriptive science explains ideas objectively while normative science explains what should be true using value judgments.[5]
  • Experimentation is the use of controlled conditions to test an idea. A single independent variable is altered while all other conditions are kept the same to test the alteration's effect on a dependent variable.[6]
  • Explanation is the understanding of why a phenomenon occurs.[7]
  • Falsifiability is the ability to test a hypothesis through experimentation to determine whether it is false.[8] Karl Popper argued that a claim must be falsifiable to be recognized as scientific.[9]
  • Hypotheses are proposals of scientific fact that have yet to be definitively verified.[10]
  • Inquiry – any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem.
  • Junk science is the presentation of uncertain scientific claims as facts, typically to a legal or political end.[11]
  • Laboratory – facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific research, experiments, and measurement may be performed.
  • Objectivity is the answering of scientific questions impartially without affecting the results with biases.[5]
  • Prediction is the use of observation to determine future results through inference.[12]
  • Pseudoscience is unscientific practice or belief that is presented as scientific or uses scientific language to suggest credibility.[13]
  • Reproducibility is the ability to recreate the results of a process.[14]
  • Research – systematic investigation into existing or new knowledge.
  • Scientific discovery – observation of new phenomena, new actions, or new events and providing new reasoning to explain the knowledge gathered through such observations with previously acquired knowledge from abstract thought and everyday experiences.
  • Scientific laws are descriptions of scientific fact that apply universally under all circumstances.[10]
  • Scientific theories are descriptions of scientific fact that are known to be true but cannot be proven to apply universally.[10]
  • Sociology of science considers interactions, incentives, and norms within the scientific community. It was developed as an independent field in the mid-20th century by Robert K. Merton.[16]
  • Verisimilitude is the degree to which a claim approaches the truth. The verisimilitude between two false ideas can be compared to determine which is less flawed.[17]
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Scientific method

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Scientific method (outline) – body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on observable, empirical, measurable evidence, and subject to laws of reasoning, both deductive and inductive.

  • Empirical method –
  • Experimental method – The steps involved to produce a reliable and logical conclusion include:
    1. Conducting initial research and asking a question about a natural phenomenon
    2. Making observations of the phenomenon and/or collecting data about it
    3. Forming a hypothesis – proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous observations that cannot satisfactorily be explained with the available scientific theories.
    4. Predicting a logical consequence of the hypothesis
    5. Testing the hypothesis through an experiment – methodical procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. The 3 types of scientific experiments are:
      • Controlled experiment – experiment that compares the results obtained from an experimental sample against a control sample, which is practically identical to the experimental sample except for the one aspect the effect of which is being tested (the independent variable).
      • Natural experiment – empirical study in which the experimental conditions (i.e., which units receive which treatment) are determined by nature or by other factors out of the control of the experimenters and yet the treatment assignment process is arguably exogenous. Thus, natural experiments are observational studies and are not controlled in the traditional sense of a randomized experiment.
        • Observational study – draws inferences about the possible effect of a treatment on subjects, where the assignment of subjects into a treated group versus a control group is outside the control of the investigator.
      • Field experiment – applies the scientific method to experimentally examine an intervention in the real world (or as many experimentalists like to say, naturally occurring environments) rather than in the laboratory. See also field research.
    6. Gather and analyze data from experiments or observations, including indicators of uncertainty.
    7. Draw conclusions by comparing data with predictions. Possible outcomes:
      • Conclusive:
        • The hypothesis is falsified by the data.
        • Data are consistent with the hypothesis.
        • Data are consistent with alternative hypotheses.
      • Inconclusive:
        • Data are not relevant to the hypothesis, or data and predictions are incommensurate.
        • There is too much uncertainty in the data to draw any conclusion.
    8. Further steps include peer review and enabling others to reproduce or falsify the observations and/or conclusions
  • Deductive-nomological model
  • Scientific modelling –
  • Models of scientific method
    • Hypothetico-deductive model – proposed description of scientific method. According to it, scientific inquiry proceeds by formulating a hypothesis in a form that could conceivably be falsified by a test on observable data. A test that could and does run contrary to predictions of the hypothesis is taken as a falsification of the hypothesis. A test that could but does not run contrary to the hypothesis corroborates the theory.
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Branches of science

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Main article: Branches of science
Further information: List of words with the suffix -ology

Science is divided into disciplines that explore different subject matter. Each discipline has its own considerations when being studied, and different methods are used between them. Scientists typically specialize in one discipline.[18] Interdisciplinary sciences pull from multiple fields of study.[19]

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Types of scientific fields

  • Exact science – any field of science capable of accurate quantitative expression or precise predictions and rigorous methods of testing hypotheses, especially reproducible experiments involving quantifiable predictions and measurements.
  • Fundamental science – science that describes the most basic objects, forces, relations between them and laws governing them, such that all other phenomena may be in principle derived from them following the logic of scientific reductionism.
  • Hard and soft science – colloquial terms often used when comparing scientific fields of academic research or scholarship, with hard meaning perceived as being more scientific, rigorous, or accurate.
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Politics of science

  • Disruptive technology – innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology.
  • Kansas evolution hearings – series of hearings held in Topeka, Kansas, United States 5 to 12 May 2005 by the Kansas State Board of Education and its State Board Science Hearing Committee to change how evolution and the origin of life would be taught in the state's public high school science classes.
  • List of books about the politics of science – list of books about the politics of science.
  • Politicization of science – politicization of science is the manipulation of science for political gain.
  • Science by press release – refers to scientists who put an unusual focus on publicizing results of research in the media.
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History

Main article: History of science
Further information: Historiography of science and Sociology of the history of science

Timeline

Further information: List of years in science, List of science timelines, and Timeline of scientific discoveries

Historical disciplines

Further information: Protoscience and List of superseded scientific theories
  • Alchemy is the historical study of what is now associated with chemistry.[40] It was accepted as a science until the end of the 17th century.[40][41]
  • Astrology is a method used in ancient and medieval times to study the social sciences through physical phenomena.[42]
  • Cosmogony is the study of Earth's origins through divine creation.[43]
  • Natural history is the historical name for study of subjects that are now associated with biology.[38]
  • Natural philosophy is the historical name for study of subjects that are now associated with physics and astronomy.[38]
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Philosophy of science

See also: Outline of philosophy § Philosophy of science, and Experimental philosophy

Adoption, use, results and coordination of science

See also: § Politics of science, and Category:Science in society

Technology and mechanisms of science

Scientific community

Scientific organizations

Scientists

  • Scientist – practitioner of science; an individual who uses scientific method to objectively inquire into the nature of reality—be it the fundamental laws of physics or how people behave. There are many names for scientists, often named in relation to the job that they do. One example of this is a biologist, a scientist who studies biology (the study of living organisms and their environments).

Types of scientist

  • Academic – community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research.
  • Corporate Scientist – someone who is employed by a business to do research and development for the benefit of that business
  • Layperson – someone who is not an expert or someone who has not had professional training
  • Gentleman scientist – financially independent scientist who pursues scientific study as a hobby.
  • Government scientist – scientist employed by a country's government

Famous scientists

Main article: Lists of scientists
  • Aristotle – Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great
  • Archimedes – Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer
  • Andreas Vesalius – Flemish anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body)
  • Nicolaus Copernicus – Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe
  • Galileo Galilei – Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution
  • Johannes Kepler – German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
  • René Descartes – French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic
  • Isaac Newton – English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived"
  • Leonhard Euler – pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace – French mathematician and astronomer whose work was pivotal to the development of mathematical astronomy and statistics
  • Alexander von Humboldt – German geographer, naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt
  • Charles Darwin – English naturalist, he established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection
  • James Clerk Maxwell – Scottish physicist and mathematician
  • Marie Curie – Polish physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity
  • Albert Einstein – German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics
  • Linus Pauling – American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century
  • John Bardeen – American physicist and electrical engineer, the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice
  • Frederick Sanger – English biochemist and a two-time Nobel laureate in chemistry, the only person to have been so
  • Stephen Hawking – British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
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Science education

Science education

  • Scientific literacy – encompasses written, numerical, and digital literacy as they pertain to understanding science, its methodology, observations, and theories.
  • Pseudo-scholarship – is a work (e.g., publication, lecture) or body of work that is presented as, but is not, the product of rigorous and objective study or research; the act of producing such work; or the pretended learning upon which it is based.
  • Science communication
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See also

  • Sci-Mate – open collaboration of scientists using Web 2.0 software to address well known challenges in academic publishing and technology transfer
  • Science Daily – news website for topical science articles
  • Phys.org – news website for topical science articles with some public metrics
  • Science.tv – virtual community for people interested in science
  • Sci-Hub – Scientific research paper file sharing website
  • Science studies

Notes

References

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