• Question: What determines something to be a science or someone to be scientist

    Asked by Beverley to Anna, Hayley, Iain, Rebecca on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      That’s a very good question! I think anyone who is curious and interested and wants to find out new things, solve problems and change things as part of their job, could be called a scientist. Traditionally, science only refers to ‘natural science’ like physics, chemistry or biology. When I told a friend that I would be taking part in “I’m a scientist”, they immediately replied “But you’re not really a scientist, are you?”. This is because linguistics is not traditionally seen as a ‘science’. This is changing now and I think we could all be scientists – according to wikipedia, science is “systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge” – a good definition, in my opinion!

    • Photo: Iain Bethune

      Iain Bethune answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      I agree with Sascha. Lots of things can be a ‘science’ if they are approached using the Scientific Method – that is coming up with a model or a description of how something works (theory), using that theory to make predictions about how something will behave (hypothesis), and then testing the theory by making measurements of the real world (experiment). If the experiment agrees with the theory, great! If it doesn’t, the theory is wrong, or the experiment contained an error – figuring out which is 99% of a scientist’s job!

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