Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations about nature and society.[1]: 49–71 [2] It is driven by the scientific method: an empirical cycle that typically involves making observations, producing hypotheses, testing them with evidence, and drawing conclusions. Science encompasses this process and the body of knowledge it produces, which the scientific community continuously challenges, validates, and organises.
Natural science
Natural science or empirical science is a branch of science concerned with the description, understanding, and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances.
Physics
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. It is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.
Continuous Science Foundation | Transform Science Together—Get Involved
Explore how the Continuous Science Foundation promotes open, continuous, and collaborative scientific research through innovative tools, standards, and community support.
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess or thought. If a hypothesis is repeatedly independently demonstrated by experiment to be true, it becomes a scientific theory. In colloquial usage, the words "hypothesis" and "theory" are often used interchangeably, but this is incorrect in the context of science.
Political science
Political science[a] is the social scientific study of politics. It deals with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and laws. Specialists in the field are political scientists.
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter.[1][2] It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during reactions with other substances.[3][4][5][6] Chemistry also addresses the nature of chemical bonds in chemical compounds.
The Scientific Contribution Graph: Automated Literature-based Technological Roadmapping at Scale
Sir Isaac Newton famously wrote, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. Scientific contributions are rarely developed in isolation, but build upon prior contributions, such as problem framings, experimental methods, and empirical findings. Understanding these prerequisite relationships is important for studying scientific progress, and for automated scientific discovery systems that must reason about which existing capabilities can be used to develop new ones (e.g. Lu et al., 2024; Jansen et al., 2025b; Baek et al., 2025).
Research
Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to controlling sources of bias and error. These activities are characterized by accounting and controlling for biases. A research project may be an expansion of past work in the field. To test the validity of instruments, procedures, or experiments, research may replicate elements of prior projects or the project as a whole.
Methodology
In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for bringing about a certain goal, like acquiring knowledge or verifying knowledge claims. This normally involves various steps, like choosing a sample, collecting data from this sample, and interpreting the data. The study of methods concerns a detailed description and analysis of these processes. It includes evaluative aspects by comparing different methods. This way, it is assessed what advantages and disadvantages they have and for what research goals they may be used. These descriptions and evaluations depend on philosophical background assumptions. Examples are how to conceptualize the studied phenomena and what constitutes evidence for or against them. When understood in the widest sense, methodology also includes the discussion of these more abstract issues.
Discourse Graphs and the Future of Science | Protocol Labs Research
Interview between Tom Kalil, Chief Innovation Officer of Schmidt Futures, Dr. Evan Miyazono, Research Team Lead at Protocol Labs, and Dr. Matt Akamatsu, Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Washington.
Center for Open Science
At the Center for Open Science, our mission is to increase openness, integrity, and reproducibility of scholarly research. Promoting these practices within the research funding and publishing communities accelerates scientific progress
Science is open software
TL;DR I claim that modern science is synonymous with open source software. This post explains why, why it matters, and what you can (and should) do next. Why do you care about (open source) software? - Everyone I spend a lot of my time working on software. I have been asked why software matters more times than I can remember. Software is, people say, not science. It’s a time sink, something to rush past in the pursuit of what really matters: results (and papers if you’re in academia).
The Bazaar of Scientific Knowledge | shishyko!
What if we didn't collapse all the knowledge from the scientific process into one paper?
Hyperproblems: New Ways of Doing and Communicating Science - Hyperproblems
Hyperproblems: Hyperproblems are scientific challenges whose scale, complexity, novelty and interdependence overwhelm traditional research models, requiring…