The Simple (clean) Definition for What Science Is
The addiction to “the data”, in which our ways to define things have become terribly rigid and complex, we’ve lost the ability to break down and explain things to each other in simple ways.
Perhaps this is a good opportunity to go back to basics.
If we want to be secure in this life, we need the illusion of a secure future. Nothing creates greater anxiety when we don't know if the future can be certain or not. Everything about humanity is related to this binary illusion that keeps us sane: the illusion that there is a tomorrow and it's going to be fine because we know the pattern, and the illusion that yesterday was and it was ok because we left it behind.
These are illusions that hold us together.
Life is built on patterns. Everything is built on patterns and templates. And to understand how things work, in order to be able to step into a safe future, we need to know the patterns. We need to know the patterns as they work theoretically and as they work in practice. And to understand how the patterns work we are built to observe and collect the details from our environment. And it is the details that give us the recognition that the pattern is stable.
Then a sense of security arises.
The very fact that everything is built on patterns means that behind every pattern there is a formula. No matter how complex the patterns may be, there is always a formula behind each one of them.
And yet, more often than not, observed phenomena are usually composed of several patterns combined, occurring at the same time. As a result, there’s an imperative to identify the central pattern that underlies the phenomenon. That is, the most consistent pattern. The consistency is what provides the sense that the pattern is stable, and therefore will appear the same tomorrow.
Only then can it be safely projected inside our mind’s eye that:
"The sun will rise tomorrow, and it will rise from the east..."
Only then can we go to sleep in peace!
(This post, for example, is an attempt to find a formula for a consistent pattern.)
So in order to find the consistent pattern, experiments are conducted as a way to filter between the inconsistency and the consistency that underlies the phenomenon.
For example: If I ate a mushroom I found in the forest and got sick….
If we take this phenomenon as a whole, it is composed of several patterns grouped together such as:
The strain of the fungus.
Conditions:
The person who ate the mushroom:
The age of the person who ate the mushroom.
The sex of the person who ate the mushroom.
The race of the person who ate the mushroom.
The health status of the person who ate the mushroom.
Circumstances:
Did the person eat anything before they ate the mushroom?
At what time and place was the mushroom eaten?
And more and more and more.
Therefore, controlled experiments are conducted under different conditions designed to isolate these different patterns and see if the same result occurs in any or all of them. All, in order to find the most consistent pattern.
So for example, a bunch of experiments are conducted on different people and in different places in both sexes and it is found that the result regardless of conditions and circumstance, they all got sick. And so the conclusion that that particular strain of mushroom is the culprit for the toxicity, signifies that this is the most consistent pattern behind the phenomenon.
This is how a formula is composed which says:
"The 'so and so' mushroom strain is a poisonous strain for humans."
As a step forward from there, we then begin to collect the details that resulted from such a statement, which resulted from a formula in the first place, and begin to organize them according to criteria. Then, as a step forward we start writing them down, and from there it grows more and more until a “collective memory” is created as a database. From then on, separate systems are created that become a world in and within themselves such as: physics, chemistry, biology, animal biology, etc., etc.
Science!
Everything, however, started with a formula; a byproduct of finding the most reliable and consistent pattern.
So, science, in its basic definition, is a way to find a formula that stands behind (consistent) patterns that establish observed phenomena, for the sense of security in the future.