ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a rough characterisation of science, a taxonomy of the sciences, a very brief history of the development of the sciences and scientific institutions, and a discussion of in-built mechanisms that protect the integrity of the sciences from predictable threats. Science is a collective enterprise of data-driven description, prediction, and understanding in which universal expert agreement functions as regulative ideal. Formal sciences study formal systems including, in particular, formal systems that are used in the natural sciences and the social sciences. Natural sciences divide, broadly, into physical sciences and life sciences. Physical science comprises: astronomy, chemistry, geoscience – which includes environmental science, geology, geo-informatics, physical geography, and scientific study of, e.g., the earth’s atmosphere, glaciers. Social sciences study human society and relationships among individuals in human society, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Social sciences include anthropology, archaeology, communications and media studies, demography, economics, education, history, human geography, jurisprudence, linguistics, political science, social psychology, and sociology.
