Science
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Science is the methodical study of nature including testable explanations and predictions. An older and closely related current meaning emerged from Aristotle and later Alhazen, whereby “science” referred to the body of reliable knowledge that is logically and rationally explained (see “History and etymology” section below).
Since classical antiquity, science as a type of knowledge was closely linked to philosophy. In the West during the early modern period, the words “science” and “philosophy” were sometimes used interchangeably. Not until the 17th century did natural philosophy emerge as a separate branch of philosophy, which is today called “natural science”. “Science” continued to denote reliable knowledge about a topic; it remains in use in modern terms such as library science or political science.
Today, the ever-evolving term “science” refers to the pursuit of knowledge, not the knowledge itself. It is often synonymous with “natural and physical science” and often restricted to those branches of study relating to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws. Although the term implies exclusion of pure mathematics, many university faculties include Mathematics Departments within their Faculty of Science. The dominant sense in ordinary use has a narrower use for the term “science.” It developed as a part of science becoming a distinct enterprise of defining the “laws of nature“; early examples include Kepler‘s laws, Galileo‘s laws, and Newton‘s laws of motion. In this period it became more common to refer to natural philosophy as “natural science.” Over the course of the 19th century, the word “science” became increasingly associated with the disciplined study of the natural world, including physics, chemistry, geology and biology. This sometimes left the study of human thought and society in a linguistic limbo, which was resolved by classifying these areas of academic study as social science. For example, psychology evolved from philosophy, and has grown into an area of study.
Currently, there are both “hard” (e.g. biological psychology) and “soft” science (e.g. social psychology) fields within the discipline. As a result, and as is consistent with the unfolding of the study of knowledge and development of methods to establish facts, each area of psychology employs a scientific method. Reflecting the evolution of the development of knowledge and established facts and the use of the scientific method, Psychology Departments in universities are found within: Faculty of Arts and Science, Faculty of Arts, and a Faculty of Science. Similarly, several other major areas of disciplined study and knowledge exist today under the general rubric of “science”, such as formal science and applied science.
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Selected article
The ATLAS collaboration, the group of physicists building the detector, was formed in 1992 when the proposed EAGLE (Experiment for Accurate Gamma, Lepton and Energy Measurements) and ASCOT (Apparatus with Super COnducting Toroids) collaborations merged their efforts into building a single, general-purpose particle detector for the Large Hadron Collider. The design was a combination of those two previous designs, as well as the detector research and development that had been done for the Superconducting Supercollider.
Selected picture
The Falkirk Wheel, named after the nearby town of Falkirk in central Scotland, is a rotating boat lift connecting the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal, which at this point differ by 24 metres, roughly equivalent to the height of an eight story building.
On 24 May 2002, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Falkirk Wheel as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations. The opening had been delayed by a month due to flooding caused by vandals who forced open the Wheel’s gates.
Selected biography
Did you know…
- …that the gestation period of the ring-tailed lemur (pictured) is approximately 146 days?
- …that the Late November 2006 Nor’easter caused winds up to 80 mph (70 knots) in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the earliest snowfall on record for Savannah, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, as well as Charleston, South Carolina‘s only occurrence of thundersnow on record?
- …that the Rufous-crowned Sparrow, a medium-sized sparrow of the southwestern United States and Mexico, has a subspecies endemic to the Todos Santos Islands that has not been seen since the 1970s?
- …that the Christmas 1994 Nor’easter led to wind gusts of 99 mph/86 knots in Massachusetts, and briefly formed an eye?
- …that the Northern Red-legged Frog is a near-threatened species, whose male defends breeding pond territory with nocturnal displays?
