What is science? - You may not like this.
An example of science is what our hunter ancestors did. When fishing with a spear if they threw the spear directly at the fish they would miss. If they threw the spear a little short they would hit the fish. We now call this effect refraction. Our ancestors did this repeatedly (they practised) so they were repeating the experiment. They predicted where the fish would be. They named the spear and the fish.
The essential steps are – a) Use senses to observe what is happening around us, b) see if what we observe happens again and again under the same conditions, c) if it does happen again and again use this to predict that it will happen again in the future and d) name things as we go.
Newton observed an apple falling (well let’s go along with that). He saw that it happened every time an apple was released from a twig. He called this effect gravity. He no doubt realised that gravity affected things other than apples. He scaled up a bit and applied his observation to bigger objects such as planets. He observed so closely and described what happened so accurately, that words were not enough. He needed another language to describe what was going on. It is called mathematics but it is still a language and it still describes. Using his observations and mathematics it is possible to predict what will happen in the future, for example eclipses.
Our ancestors could only use their five senses – touch, taste, hearing, sight and smell to observe. These can only take you so far. Science has advanced a lot because using our five senses to observe has allowed us to make devices that extend them. We made telescopes (e.g. light and radio). We made microscopes (e.g. light, and electron). We made hadron colliders. We made brain scanners. We made a host of other sense extending devices. We made computers to help us with the language of mathematics, modelling and prediction. We have been very clever in designing experiments to help us observe what the universe looks like when it is very small and when it is very big. Science nevertheless remains a) observing, b) repeating observations c) predicting d) naming.
Notice in all this, I have avoided the word explain. Science does not explain. It can say “if this happens that will happen.” This is observation not explanation. Naming divides up what is really a continuum. It turns nature’s analogue into digital.
The ‘clouded yellow butterfly’ is part of a continuum stretching back to the first cell and thence to the big bang and forward to who knows what?
We can now see the very small and the very big. We can see that matter is made of quarks and a myriad of other particles. What are they made of? We can name something a quark but this does not explain it. Einstein described the fact that matter is energy and energy is matter. What is energy? OK, it’s matter. What is matter? Ok, it’s energy. Mathematics can describe their interrelationship. Note I say describe but not explain. The laws of physics are not laws they are observations. They might not happen in other universes.
Science has been brilliant for us. Think of all the gadgets we have invented. Think of how much easier it is for us to get our food and other requirements of life. In spite of this it does not actually explain anything at a fundamental level. Don’t get me wrong science is the best thing that we have got. It doesn’t make things up. It observes carefully and we are so much better off for it but don’t overestimate what it has done. Maybe in the future it will explain something, who knows?