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© Copyright 1999, Jim Loy
When I was young, I thought that science was a huge collection of facts. And I memorized facts. I know that the mean distance to the moon is 238,857 miles. While this fact is important in some ways, in other ways it is very unimportant.
I have slowly come to realize that science is not any collection of facts at all, but rather it is THE METHOD (collection of methods, actually) by which facts are discovered.
When you look at science from that perspective (as a method, rather than a collection of facts), it blossoms (We have achieved blossomosity here) into a gigantic structure that is much more interesting than the original collection of facts. The collection of facts was merely a list. Science now becomes infinitely more complex.
The word "science" apparently comes from the Latin word "scientia," which means "knowledge." To quote the Columbia Encyclopedia: "For many the term science refers to the organized body of knowledge concerning the physical world, both animate and inanimate, but a proper definition would also have to include the attitudes and methods through which this body of knowledge is formed."