Ian+and+Matt+What+is+this+science

What is //this// science can be answered many different ways. Many years of research and experimenting have gone into science, but no one can really tell you the true definition of science itself. One way to look at science is its contribution to the advancement of society. Another way to define this science would be to look at it from the point of view of the scientist. One could even define science from the point of view of the general population. Yet another way to describe science would be to use the literal definition of the word from the dictionary. We can describe science by its impact on society. Science has been used as the tool to find new inventions and develop civilization and knowledge about the world around us. Science has also changed throughout the years. The science that we use today and the science of the past isn’t completely different, it has just evolved. Science was originally used for the necessity of the people such as medicine and land distribution for example the ancient Egyptians used measurement to divide land and collect taxes. We still use science for these same purposes, but our methods for doing so have become more efficient over the years. Once civilization had advanced enough that their basic needs were met they could focus scientific discoveries from necessity to curiosity of things that were not understood. An example of this is the heliocentric model replacing the geocentric model. This doesn’t affect daily life, but people have always searched for understanding of the world and universe around them. The next way to describe science is from the point of view of the scientists themselves. Early scientists such as Aristotle would have described science as a way to logically solve problems. Other early scientists would also say that science is a way to discover more about the environment and all living things. More recent scientists have even created a method for carrying out science. They would call it the scientific method. This method would be used to help other scientists replicate their experiments. The problem with this method is that most scientists would not use this method, because their own style would work better. Scientists would find it hard to define what science is without having a biased view. The questions also wouldn’t matter much to a scientist, because they would be more worried about the further “advancement” of science. We say “advanced” since scientific discovery can be a large step backwards such as Plato view on matter, “ without resort to experiment, proved counterproductive to the further development of scientific understanding for centuries" (Fowler).    The population would view science in a different light. Early populations didn’t really care about scientific discoveries unless it affected daily life. Discoveries such as the cycle of the seasons and the flooding of the Nile were the most important scientific discoveries to common people since this information was useful for farming. Once the sciences became more involved with technologies the common people cared more about those advancements. The discovery of things like the printing press and electricity had a huge impact on everyday life of the common people. Although; the common people didn’t really care as much about how the device works they learned to appreciate the technology and science that allowed the creation of the device. A good example of this would be the invention of the cell phone, many people wouldn’t understand the inner workings of the cell phone but almost everyone uses one and would find life hard without its practicality. The final part of defining science is the literal definition. The definition from [|www.merriam-webster.com] is “ knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena”