ABSTRACT
Social work has often been called a science or an art, and various attempts have been made to distinguish social work from friendship and from analytical therapy. This chapter attempts to discern the different ways in which social work and science or art have been linked and discusses the main issues. It focuses on the aspects of the relationship between social work and science. 'Science' is a concept that can be used in a number of different ways, and it has also high positive and negative value for social workers. The chapter provides a number of quotations showed how persistently social work and science have been linked. It describes two main ideas of the connection between science and social work. First is the apparently trivial view that 'science' is the equivalent of unemotional, clear thinking; and the second sees social work either as a science in its own right or as an applied science.
