LGBTitp - Part Seven

[Drolyt]

In my mind a "controlled experiment" is one where you are testing whether something is true or false based on an isolated variable and where you can control all the other variables so that you are sure (or at least as sure as possible) that the result is accurate. In my mind a field of study where you cannot conduct such experiments isn't a science.

Part of my reason for defining things this way is historical. Science originally only refereed to what was previously called "natural philosophy". The difference between the two is the methodology I described above. The tendency to refer to fields of study such as the social sciences as "science" is to my mind an attempt to make said fields of study "valid" in the eyes of the public because of the prestige science has. But I guess in the end it is just sophistry, a number of people agree with my narrow definition of science but I think we are still in the minority.

Edit: I should note that technically the original meaning of "science" is closer to what we would call simply "knowledge". Ditto for philosophy, which is Greek for "the love of wisdom". That I prefer to use philosophy as the broader term and limit science to natural philosophy with an empirical methodology is perhaps arbitrary.