For a topic outline of science, see Outline of science.
An older and closely related meaning still in use today is that found for example in
Aristotle, whereby "science" refers to the body of reliable knowledge itself, of the type that
Since classical antiquity science as a type of knowledge was closely linked to philosophy. In the early
modern era the two words, "science" and "philosophy", were sometimes used interchangeably in the
English language. By the 17th century, "natural philosophy" (which is today called "natural science") had
begun to be considered separately from "philosophy" in general. However, "science" continued to be used
in a broad sense denoting reliable knowledge about a topic, in the same way it is still used in modern
terms such as library science or political science.
In modern use, "science" is a term which more often refers to a way of pursuing knowledge, and not the
knowledge itself. It is often treated as synonymous with ‘natural and physical science’, and thus restricted to
those branches of study that relate to the phenomena of the material universe and their laws, sometimes
with implied exclusion of pure mathematics. This is now the dominant sense in ordinary use. This narrower
sense of "science" developed as a part of science became a distinct enterprise of defining "laws of nature",
based on early examples such as Kepler's laws, Galileo's laws, and Newton's laws of motion. In this period
it became more common to refer to natural philosophy as "natural science". Over the course of the 19th
century, the word "science" became increasingly associated with the disciplined study of the natural world
including physics, chemistry, geology and biology. This sometimes left the study of human thought and
society in a linguistic limbo, which was resolved by classifying these areas of academic study as social
science. Similarly, several other major areas of disciplined study and knowledge exist today under the
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