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I disagree. It is a very easy question to answer so long as you realize that "science" is a subset of "knowledge". It has been accepted for quite some time now

I disagree. It is a very easy question to answer so long as you realize that "science" is a subset of "knowledge". It has been accepted for quite some time now that falsifiability is the key factor distinguishing science from everything that's not science. However there are other forms of knowledge (math, for example) that are not science. Consequently, this is why you'll hear many physicists claim that string theory is not science. It certainly looks like science, and some day it might become science, but currently as the bulk of string theory is not falsifiable, it is not, strictly speaking, science.

Retra 10y ago
Math is falsifiable. You can derive innumerable self-contradictory mathematical systems and we discard them because they are demonstrably useless. The demonstrability of uselessness is falsifiability.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Math is falsifiable. Not in the sense that propositions of science are, where falsifiability refers to empirical falsification, not logical contradiction. What you are doing is called "equivocation". > You can derive innumerable self-contradictory mathematical systems and we discard them because they are demonstrably useless. No, we reject any set that includes self-contradictions; we may choose which self-consistent set to use in a particular domain because of empirical utility, but, to the extent there is falsification involved their, its not of the math or set of axioms, per se, but of its applicability to the problem domain.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 10y ago
  Non-euclidean geometries were useless for some time :)
  - Retra 10y ago
    The were very useful for modeling the structures they were used to model, and for educating on the flexibility of alternative geometries, as well as discussing the veracity of existing assumptions. So no, they were never useless. The people who discovered them and studied them knew they weren't useless, which is why they were so willing to go down that road. They just didn't make anyone any money or solve any immediate broadly applicable problems in society.
    - Mikhail_Edoshin 10y ago
      So basically a thing is not useless if you know it's not. I can accept that :)
cassowary 10y ago
I disagree. You've described a very good way of actually conducting science, which would probably be more reliable than the way we've been doing it. You italicised "disprove" in your earlier post because you know that when people do science, they don't try and disprove their own view. At best, they come up with experiments designed to disprove someone else's view. In reality scientists are searching for data that can be comfortably explained in terms of their view but which cannot be so comfortably explained in terms of competing views. But the thing about science is, that even though people are doing it wrong, it still works. Science is somehow robust even to such fundamental mistakes, that it ceases to be science. Then again, we might have spent the last century or so building a completely false model of the universe because our technique is wrong, because we haven't actually been conducting science according to the sort of definition you give. It's worth considering, but I doubt it's true.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > You italicised "disprove" in your earlier post because you know that when people do science, they don't try and disprove their own view. At best, they come up with experiments designed to disprove someone else's view. Which is fine. The scientific method does not rely on the same actor performing each of the steps. In fact, a major part of the point of the scientific method is to avoid such a dependency.

Retra 10y ago

Math is falsifiable. You can derive innumerable self-contradictory mathematical systems and we discard them because they are demonstrably useless. The demonstrability of uselessness is falsifiability.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Math is falsifiable. Not in the sense that propositions of science are, where falsifiability refers to empirical falsification, not logical contradiction. What you are doing is called "equivocation". > You can derive innumerable self-contradictory mathematical systems and we discard them because they are demonstrably useless. No, we reject any set that includes self-contradictions; we may choose which self-consistent set to use in a particular domain because of empirical utility, but, to the extent there is falsification involved their, its not of the math or set of axioms, per se, but of its applicability to the problem domain.
Mikhail_Edoshin 10y ago
Non-euclidean geometries were useless for some time :)
- Retra 10y ago
  The were very useful for modeling the structures they were used to model, and for educating on the flexibility of alternative geometries, as well as discussing the veracity of existing assumptions. So no, they were never useless. The people who discovered them and studied them knew they weren't useless, which is why they were so willing to go down that road. They just didn't make anyone any money or solve any immediate broadly applicable problems in society.
  - Mikhail_Edoshin 10y ago
    So basically a thing is not useless if you know it's not. I can accept that :)

cassowary 10y ago

I disagree. You've described a very good way of actually conducting science, which would probably be more reliable than the way we've been doing it. You italicised "disprove" in your earlier post because you know that when people do science, they don't try and disprove their own view. At best, they come up with experiments designed to disprove someone else's view. In reality scientists are searching for data that can be comfortably explained in terms of their view but which cannot be so comfortably explained in terms of competing views. But the thing about science is, that even though people are doing it wrong, it still works. Science is somehow robust even to such fundamental mistakes, that it ceases to be science. Then again, we might have spent the last century or so building a completely false model of the universe because our technique is wrong, because we haven't actually been conducting science according to the sort of definition you give. It's worth considering, but I doubt it's true.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> You italicised "disprove" in your earlier post because you know that when people do science, they don't try and disprove their own view. At best, they come up with experiments designed to disprove someone else's view. Which is fine. The scientific method does not rely on the same actor performing each of the steps. In fact, a major part of the point of the scientific method is to avoid such a dependency.