ABSTRACT
What is science? Science is, at its most blunt, a tool, a method we have invented that assists our understanding of the world. It’s a machine for obtaining, or attempting to obtain, knowledge. And it is jolly successful, he said, writing on a computer, looking through a pair of spectacles and listening to Mozart and the Bee Gees on his headphones. It’s also a method by which we can make credible claims about how the world apparently routinely works – and just as importantly, how it doesn’t work. At its broadest, this is how we can separate astrology from astronomy – one of them provides reliable information about the universe that appears to be routinely justified by experience, and the other doesn’t, unless you happen to believe that all Scorpios in the world will experience a broadly similar day. Give me strength.
