The two faces of science

Abstract

Science is an episode in the history of knowledge. All knowledge comes from experience and its reflection on experience. But science is something more: it involves a stage in our evolution when resources, people, and institutions are set apart for the explicit purpose of going further. Every time mankind engages with new subjects or processes, it comes up with more elements to investigate: the selection of crop varieties gave us genetics; navigation and agriculture gave us astronomy; the steam engine gave us thermodynamics; thus, science represents the development of our knowledge as a species.