Soon is a relative term

(the following is out of context. In its current form it is only useful if you are put into a situation where you MUST force your ideas into pre-constructed boxes. Boxes that are not quite the right shape. However, some genuine thought did seem to come of this "writing." Soon I will rip apart the boxes and let my ideas come to fruition. Until then... this is all you get.)

Thus far, it seems we are "choosing" to define science as an amalgamation of three more basic modes of science; they are as follows: science as a way of knowing, science as a process, and science as a particular kind of work.

“Science as a way of knowing” means that science is suitable as a means of defining our universe. Fundamentally, this means that a least some part of the information discovered through science is potentially True knowledge. “True knowledge” can be described as any infallible fact. Roughly, this can be stated as, “the world is understandable [though science].”

The consequences of science being a way of knowing are not intrinsic or vital to the nature of science they are just consequences. However, it might be helpful to examine a few. Say a scientist is anyone who implements science. As our definition stands now, all anyone has to do to implement science is “something” that stumbles across potentially True knowledge. Assuming that most science is knowingly pursued, that definition can be revised too; a scientist is anyone that knowingly pursues potentially True knowledge. It seems reasonable that the pursuit of potentially True knowledge is going to lead to a lot of general knowledge, and it seems reasonable that general knowledge has some value in the pursuit of True knowledge. Since the only requirement of True knowledge is infallibility, it seems logical to judge the value of general knowledge by how close it comes to infallibility. From this stems the trend that scientific knowledge is often replaced by seemingly more infallible knowledge.

“Science as a process” refers to the means of pursuit in the “pursuit of potentially True knowledge.” It is important to notice that, in science, to fulfill the requirement of “pursuing” requires any matter of physical investigation. Physical investigation must entail the use of physical properties in some form.

There are many standards to how scientists pursue knowledge and general patterns of inquiry, but they are not necessary in defining science. Largely they relate more to differentiating competent scientists from poor ones.

“Science as a particular kind of work” this largely deals with how a professional research scientist deals with society, and vice versa. It is important to understand if one hopes to be a practicing professional scientist one day, but it doesn’t seem help define fundamentally what the nature of science is. More, it seems like it describes the effect of taking science and unleashing it on the world, and vice versa. Much science takes place completely removed from “the scientific enterprise.” I’m therefore not going to divulge on it now.

-k-