ABSTRACT
Concerning science, Diamond [120] explains: “How can one study the collapses of societies ‘scientifically’? Science is often misrepresented as ‘the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory’. Actually, science is something much broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world (italics by the authors). In some fields, such as chemistry and molecular biology, replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory are feasible and provide by far the most reliable means to acquire knowledge. ...
