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Science = a logically articulated structure of falsifiable opinions about nature (society).
What does this artificial sounding statement try to convey? The phrase “logically
articulated"
refers to what we call the scientific (or, axiomatic) method of constructing a science. We
begin
from some basic assumptions (axioms) and use logical reasoning to derive results that we
call
“theorems". The construction as a whole (the assumptions, the derivations, and the results)
constitutes a “theory". (So, for example, economic theory that forms the foundations of
economics consists of basic assumptions, logical derivations, and a collection of results.)
NOTE: Here, the word “theory" is used is a particular way, to refer to the collective
construct of
a piece of scientific reasoning (as in Einstein’s theory of relativity) that has been subjected
to
empirical testing and verification (see the next paragraph) and is completely different from
the
everyday meaning of “theory" (a guess or a suggestion as in “that’s just a theory"). One
could say
that a scientific theory is not “a theory" in this latter sense!
The phrase “falsifiable opinions" in our definition of a science refers to the ultimate
purpose of
science which is to understand the world we live in. Thus, guesses (“theories" in the
everyday
parlance) do not do as scientific theories. A cornerstone of a scientific theory is that is
testable,
that it can be falsified (observed to be wrong or unsatisfactory in explaining the actual
workings
of the world). Here, “facts" or data observations become very important: we can use them
to test
how well a particular theory explains and predicts what we see (a large part of economics
