Science
Overview
 
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...

 in the form of testable explanations
Scientific theory
A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules that express relationships between observations of such concepts...

 and predictions
Predictability
Predictability is the degree to which a correct prediction or forecast of a system's state can be made either qualitatively or quantitatively.-Predictability and Causality:...

 about the universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...

. An older and closely related meaning still in use today is that found for example in Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, whereby "science" refers to the body of reliable knowledge itself, of the type that can be logically and rationally
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...

 explained (see "History and etymology" section below).

Since classical antiquity
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

 science as a type of knowledge was closely linked to philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

.
Quotations

Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.

Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values (1956)

The symbol and the metaphor are as necessary to science as to poetry.

Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values (1956)

I'm not anti-science, I'm anti the way science is sometimes used.

Charles, Prince of Wales, BBC TV programme, ‘Charles at 60: The Passionate Prince,’ 12th November 2008.

Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.

Often quoted by Arthur C. Clarke as one of his favorite remarks of Jawaharlal Nehru|Jawaharlal Nehru, though some of his earliest citations of it, in Voices from the Sky : Previews of the Coming Space Age (1967), p. 154 indicate that Nehru may himself been either quoting or paraphrasing a statement of Vinoba Bhave|Vinoba Bhave.

It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man|Descent of Man (introduction)

Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of Alexander the Great|the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

Sir Humphry Davy|Humphry Davy, discourse delivered at the Royal Society (30 November 1825)

There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.

Richard Dawkins, The Enemies of Reason|The Enemies of Reason, "Slaves to Superstition" [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 00:38:16ff

 
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