Leftists have many views about science. Some love it, feeling it is the touchstone of all knowledge. Some hate it, feeling it is a source of vast harm and hierarchy. A few even think it is just another story, no better or worse in any sense, than any others, and mostly, no more valid. Most fall in between these poles, but often without having subjected either the extreme views, or those between, to careful assessment.

Perhaps in a few shorts essays it will be possible to develop a more nuanced and compelling picture, not only of what science is, including its logic, benefits, and burdens, but also of what it might be, in a better society.

So, to start, we know just by the breadth of assessments that science must be fuzzy at its edges making it hard to pin down what is and what isn’t science. Nonetheless, we also know we can assert that science refers to an accumulated body of information about the components of the cosmos and to testable claims or theories about how those components interact, as well as to the processes by which we add to our information, claims, and theories, and/or the processes by which we reject them as false or determine that they are possibly or even likely true.

This said, it follows that your personal knowledge that the grass you can see from your window is green is not science, nor is your knowledge that your back was hurting (or was pain free) an hour ago. Experience is not science. Nor are perceptions, even perceptions of regularities, though both experience and perceptions can be valid and important.

It isn’t by way of science that we know what love is or that we are experiencing pain or pleasure. So there are more ways of knowing than just doing science. It also isn’t science that tells a Little Leaguer how to get under a fly ball to catch it. Must be another way of knowing, that is largely automatic, no less. We don’t know how to talk at all, nor what to say in most situations, due to practicing nor even due to benefiting from the practice of science, and this is likely true as well even for knowing how to add or multiply numbers, as compared to knowing how to calculate the size of molecules.

Most of life including even most information discovery we do and most communication we undertake occurs without doing science, without being ratified by science, and without denying, defying, crucifying, deifying, or even conveying science.

And yet, most of the knowing and thinking and especially most of the predicting or explaining that is not science is at least much like science, even if it is not science per se.

What distinguishes what we do every day from what we call science is typically more a difference of degree than a difference of kind.

Perceiving is perceiving. Claiming is claiming. Respecting evidence is respecting evidence. What distinguishes scientists doing these things in labs and libraries from Mr. Jones doing these things to choose the day’s outfit and stroll into town safe from predicted rain is science’s personal and collective discipline.

Science doesn’t add new claims about the properties of reality’s components or their interactions onto its piles of information and its theories, nor assert the truth or falsity of any part of that pile, without diverse groups of people reproducing supporting evidence and verifying logical claims under very exacting conditions of careful collection, categorization, and calculation. Nor does science do so without reasons to believe that what is added has significant implications vis a vis the pile’s overall character, history, and development.

Random noise doesn’t matter, even if verified. As Einstein writes, “a theory is more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its applicability.”

What is most happily added to science’s knowledge pile is ratified evidence or claims that verify or refute previously in doubt parts of the pile or that add new non-redundant terrain to the pile in turn giving hope of providing new vistas for further exploration.

If we look at the sky and say, hey, the moon circles the earth, it is an observation, yes, but it is not yet science. If we detail the motions of the moon and provide strong evidence for our claims about its circling the earth that are reproducible and testable by others, we are getting close to serious science and arguably contributing data to science. If we pose a theory about what is happening with the moon, as Newton did, and we then test our theory’s predictions to see if they are ever falsified or especially if they predict new verifiable outcomes that are surprising to us, then we are very likely doing science.

Webster’s Dictionary defines science as “the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines science as “a branch of study which is concerned with a body of demonstrated truths or observed facts, systematically classified and more or less colligated by being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truths within its own domain.”

72 Noble Laureates agreed on the following definition: “”Science is devoted to formulating and testing naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. It is a process for systematically collecting and recording data about the physical world, then categorizing and studying the collected data in an effort to infer the principles of nature that best explain the observed phenomena.”

And Richard Feynman one of the foremost physicists of the twentieth century pithily sums up the whole picture: “During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas – which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science.”

Render unto science that which science can address. And no more, as well as no less.

This injunction is a first step toward leftists relating to science in a worthy way. But other steps, addressed in coming essays, are also needed.