What is Science?

What is Science?

Introduction

Science is one of the most extraordinary efforts of mankind to make more objective knowledge, against natural tendencies to make subjective and debtor interests, class or group and perhaps therein lies in the strength of their extraordinary progress. The positivist philosophy of science has over-idealized this position, attributing qualities to science extreme rationality and empiricism is not always achieved in practice. Consequently, for positivism scientific knowledge are neutral, value-free and is above outside influence to the objectivity of the facts, such as ideology, society, economy, social pressure groups, and trends subjective individual, etc., in short, is not influenced by the culture of the society in which they live and work scientists (Franklin, 1995). This position, along with the very difficult to understand much of the knowledge generated by science, has made public opinion has been designated by certain dehumanization, seeming that is beyond the abilities and interests of the average citizen; idea that has contributed to isolate the science of humanistic culture or simply the world of literature and the arts. However, in recent decades, epistemological studies, history and sociology of science have falsified this positivist view.

Discussion

Science, as it follows from the above is the most important part of the culture. Science includes both specific activities to obtain new knowledge, and the result of this activity, the amount received to date scientific knowledge, which collectively forms the scientific picture of the world. Scientific findings are usually presented in the form of theoretical descriptions, flow charts, summaries of experimental data and formulas. Unlike other types of activity, where the outcome is known in advance, the science increments the knowledge, i.e. its result is a fundamentally nontraditional.

For example, the art is another crucial element of culture, it is distinguished by the pursuit of logic, and most generalized, objective knowledge. Often, described as the art of thinking in images, while science is thinking in concepts. This does not mean the existence of impassable boundaries between science and art, as well as between science and other cultural phenomena (Jagtenberg, 1983).

The sociology of scientific knowledge has gone even further, arguing that it cannot be adequately explained without recourse to the social, that is that there is no scientific knowledge linked exclusively to rational and cognitive reasons. Numerous studies framed in the sociology of science, especially since the postmodern perspective, have come to show that science, like any other multiple human activities, is socially constructed and therefore, is subject to the influences of society and culture, while also influencing them as a result of mutual interaction, which is characteristic of any human system. Science was born in the context of Western culture, taking many of their values, beliefs and social conventions so that ethnocentrism permeates the culture of science, although the mark and the aura of neutrality and objectivity own rationality and empiricism that professes (Shadish, 1994).

Moreover, as history clearly shows the interaction of science with technology and society up to the present situation of profound overlap between ...