Science and Scientific Research

  • Science: “a systematic and organized body of knowledge in any area of inquiry that is acquired using ‘the scientific method'”. It can be grouped into Natural Science and Social Science based on what is being studied. Based on the purpose of the study, it can be categorized as Pure Science and Applied Science.
    • Natural Science: “the science of naturally occurring objects or phenomena, such as light, objects, matter, earth, celestial bodies, or the human body.”
    • Social science: “the science of people or collections of people, such as groups, firms, societies, or economies, and their individual or collective behaviors.”
    • Pure Science: “those that explain the most basic objects and forces, relationships between them, and laws governing them”.
    • Applied Science: It is one which applies scientific knowledge from basic sciences in a physical environment.
  • Scientific knowledge: “a generalized body of laws and theories to explain a phenomenon or behavior of interest that are acquired using the scientific method.”
    • Laws: “are observed patterns of phenomena or behaviors”
    • Theories: “are systematic explanations of the underlying phenomenon or behavior”
  • Scientific Research: Research is about the study and investigation to discover new facts or to seek confirmation of existing facts. Scientific Research is the activity by which scientific knowledge is built, i.e. the process by which laws are built or theories are postulated to explain natural or social phenomena. The process involves ‘logic or theory’ and ‘evidence/observations’ – going from theory to observations or going from observations to theory. Thus scientific research is about building scientific knowledge.
  • Scientific Method: The set of techniques by which scientific knowledge is built. The method should be Logical (Scientific inferences must be based on logical principles of reasoning), Confirmable (Inferences derived must match with observed evidence), Repeatable (Observations should be repeatable by other researchers atleast with similar values) and Scrutinizable (procedure followed must stand the scrutiny of other researchers).

↑ Research

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