by When I first got this question, I immediately copied this question and pasted on Google. Here are some of the answers I got:
“Science is curiosity in thoughtful action about the world and how it behaves.” (https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/science/en/)
“Science, any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation.”(https://www.britannica.com/science/science)
Or, directly from the dictionary that “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.” (Definitions from Oxford Languages)
However, can we simply define science in these ways? Or, maybe we should look back to the origin of science?
When referring to science, it’s inevitable to talk about philosophy. There is some classical question within the field of philosophy, as many people may have heard for more than one time, which includes “how does our world works? “, “what’s the essence of the world?”, and similar questions like that. See? These may sound familiar, because that’s also what the scientists nowadays are working on with.
Due to this curiosity, philosophers started to investigate more about the world we are living in, that supposed to be the rudiment of science. As philosophers started to know more about the essence of world, knowledges are generated, falsified, and overturned by new investigations, which refers to the PARADIGM SHIFT mentioned in the reading,
Though this is a theory/way of understanding proposed by Thomas Kuhn, I have to say that I am totally agree with this interpretation. From my perspective, science is a way people understand the world. It’s initially the collection of many individual conception of knowledge, and finally become a universal acknowledged “knowledge” (usually about nature and relates to the essence of the world), which also known as “paradigm”. So, science is both a body of knowledge and a process of getting this knowledge.
If we accept this definition with pleasure, then another question may jump out: can social science be considered as a part of science? At this instance, Karl Popper’s claim echoes in my mind loudly: Science has to be falsifiable, refutable and testable! Well, I have to disagree with it this time. Though I accept it as a criterium of demarcation, for those who despise social science as saying they are “pseudo-science”, I would say science itself are a conception that has been created. To struggle whether social science belongs to science seems meaning less. If we understand science as a way to understand the world instead of the real essence of world, why should be draw such a clear line between “orthodox science “and “pseudo-science”?
After defining what “science” is, it’s time to shift our focus to the term “technology”. Many people, including me a week ago, highly agree that technology is derived from science. Nowadays, the term “science” and “technology” usually comes together, so that in Chinese, it seems that they have gradually mixed with each other to form a unity. However, things were in a different picture at first. The phenomena that science and technology have become close bonded is because the shift of people’s understanding toward technology. As what Nye and David E. has mentioned in the book “Technology Matters: Questions to Live With”, many technologies actually were invented before the scientific reason behind was discovered. Technology doesn’t have to be those high-tech things such as computer, artificial intelligence or satellites. In my opinion, all stuffs that are invented to solve our problems can be categorized into the range of “technology”.
If we accept this explanation, then how did science be associated with technology? Based on my understanding, science is a kind of promotive force took part in the development of technology. At first, the technology that people used were probably very simple: maybe just a stick or a rock to defend themselves. However, when people start to realize that current technology can’t meet with their daily needs, they will try to improve the technology. As they dig deeper in to the question of “how to improve technology”, they will find (or in another word, create) new knowledges, and we call these knowledges as “science”. So, the relation between these two concepts seems clear: the need to improve technology (usually initiated by human being’s need, or in some cases, the pure curiosity) create and facilitate science. Scientific knowledge then was used to strengthen technology. This process forms, in the term of Biology, a positive feedback. After explaining this, it becomes easier to understand why people usually associated science with technology: they positioned technology in a highly advanced position, which, without science, can’t be reached.
After talking about so many ideas and opinions, it’s time to sum up. Personally, I prefer to understand science as an acknowledged way people understand the world. It’s knowledge itself as well as the process of forming this knowledge. It also serves as a promotional force to promote the progression of the world, and usually has two sources: the pure curiosity of human beings to possess a better understanding toward the world we are living, and the need to create an easy-living world: throughout the process of accessing more advanced technology.
From that, we may also find the reason why science was exotic for Chinese. Throughout Chinese history, almost everything created was serving as a way to maintain the kingship of emperor, or the central believe of the Confucianism. Do we really need to think about the essence of the world, or think about the “liberty” as American in their history did? No. Denying authority of emperor will be seen as rebellion. Thus, though Chinese technology grows, and used to be one of the most advanced on in the history, but the science didn’t came as a result in China.
The above is just a rough assumption by myself, which may contain many errors and logical mistakes. But what I’m sure with is that science is an inevitable consequence of human development. Even if Enlightenment or Renaissance didn’t take place in human history, science will definitely appear, maybe in another form. That’s because human being’s curiosity will always exist, and our need to improve will eventually lead to what we are called “science”.