A definition of science

Science is the practice of the scientific community

What's the scientific community, then?

The scientific community is the set of all formally trained scientists

Who decides what is formal education? The scientific community.

Who does the bootstrapping for this whole project? State, authority, you name it (God?).

Implications of this definition

1. A scientific method is not a prerequisite for doing science, formal education is.
   Investiture makes you a scientist.

2. Scientism is a belief in a community of practice, aka a religion.
   State and Church should be as well separated as State and Science.

3. Science is made by people and no methodology will ever erase that.
   There is no "let's keep politics out of this" when doing science.

Why does this article exist

This whole article stems from my reading of Against Method by Paul K. Feyerabend, and trying to make a practical sense of it. Practical in the sense that I want a workable definition of science. This seems like it. For a historical view of how there is no single coherent method across time and across sciences see also "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.