Ask HN: What is science?

1 points by jbhatab 10y ago ↗ HN

I was talking with a coworker about psychology and what is classified as science. He was saying that taking a hypothesis and performing a test on it to find answers is science.

I was under the impression for something to be considered scientific that it has to be repeatable and verifiable no matter where the test was done or who performs the test. Where as psychology based tests deviate from that.

This just raised the though of... what is science exactly? I'm curious what all of you consider science.

2 comments

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[dead] intellegentBB 10y ago ↗

well there's soft & hard science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/under-the-influence/201...

ankurdhama 10y ago ↗

You are confusing 2 different terms. What your coworker describes is called "scientific process" i.e the process to do science. The output of this process is what is called a theory and that is related to the second point i.e something that can be verified by anyone and this verification is repeatable forever.