Science Is A Method

I get so tired of people exclaiming "science!" as though it was a tangible thing. Science is not lab coats, test tubes, telescopes, and all of that stuff. It is exactly that: stuff. At best, they are tools of the trades. But even still, science is not chemistry and biology and astrophysics.

Science is a method.

Science is an approach to understanding things. It is something most people do every single day without acknowledging it. When we hear a sound and find out what it is, that's science. To do otherwise would be to assume that the sound is a particular thing, but never find out for sure.

Consider a slightly more complex issue: your laptop isn't turning on. You press the power button, but nothing happens. There could be several possible explanations. You notice the power indicator light is off, but it's plugged in, so there must be a problem with the electricity (and the battery might also be dead). You check the connections to the computer and to the adapter to see if they came loose, but they are solidly connected. So you check the power strip to see that it also has a good connection, which it does. You look at the other things plugged into the power strip and notice they're all off; none of them are getting power. You plug the power strip into a different outlet and everything is suddenly working again. Now you know that your laptop was not turning on because one of your wall outlets has blown out (or so it appears).

There's nothing terribly fancy about this. Nothing that just happened needed a laboratory or a master's degree. But still, it was science. No matter how big or small, how simple or complex,no matter what tools are needed, science is an approach to life, nothing more.