i spent a term at university listening to an art historian ask the question about one created object after another - "is it art?" i learnt then that precise meanings of words often make discussions hard. at some point you discover folks mean different things by them.
what we mean by a word also changes over time. once, the word science merely meant knowledge, as art meant skill. we are moving forward from that starting point. science can mean one thing in the seventeenth century and something different now, and again tomorrow.
sometimes a definition becomes so stretched by time that it can take away a useful and precise meaning. folks want a word for something they are doing and borrow one that already exists instead of making a new one. now the category has a broader meaning. trying to define something like history as an art and psychology as a science leaves some characteristics of each discipline unsatisfied and others seemingly in the wrong category. is the discussion of love science? perhaps, if it involves the vibration of molecules, or if it is a behaviour we can bottle. perhaps not if it is the subject of a poem.
a word might also be used in different ways depending on the context. for instance, academic institutions split the world between arts and sciences and end up making categories of either-or when in some cases neither or a bit of both is more appropriate. i guess that is why we have sub-categories. economics has its hypotheses, it has its observations, it has its measurements (econometrics) but also has its unpredictable variables (eg psychological factors in economic decisions). you distinguished hard from soft sciences. sometimes economics is also described as a social science: the intelligence of human beings gives results a variety. so economics has things in common with disciplines that deal with non-intelligent subjects and things which don't. and so on. they are lumped together under category headings and folks graduate with an arts degree or a science degree depending upon the discipline. at my university, i believe folks received arts or science economics degrees depending upon whether they entered the programme from the arts or the sciences faculty!
sometimes a discipline that has seemed obedient to rules moves into a zone of uncertainty. perhaps that is true of certain elements of physics which seem to have duality at their quantum extreme. quantum physics maybe has more in common with economics than the original discipline defined by folks like galileo and newton. all things equal is a key qualifier.
so when you investigate the meanings of words, you can run into difficulties if you prefer them to be exceedingly precise. at any point in time, the meaning of a word is always a bit fuzzy. a bit like a particle, perhaps?
or put another way, precise definitions are always tricky. especially on the frontier and around the fringes of words. in this way, science is not much different from pornography. like the judge said, you know it when you see it.
even so, i think there's value in the type of method by which knowledge results from a process in which a theory is capable of disproof via measurement. we can call that science, or we can separate the meaning from the word and call it abc123. abc123 is a good method of approaching truth where the subject-matter is measurable. things which are not measurable are not abc123.
you describe a method which we might call xyz123. xyz123 has some resemblance to abc123, but also some differences. both processes have their utility. it sounds like you are saying xyz123 is appropriate for your discipline.
both models, it appears to me, permit the evolution of ideas. both allow the rejection of ideas that don't work.
at least when talking about science, we seem to have observations, hypotheses and predictions in common, even if you have reservations over measurement. let's see where your definition takes us.
i am guessing back to theology for which the absence of measurement in the definition of science might prove useful.
whereas for me, it looks like we are headed to a place where the word science itself probably loses its usefulness. is theology like chemistry? not really. if you expand the category so far, the definition balloon bursts. but what matters is not so much "is theology science?" as "is theology a discipline that is useful for divining truth?" or does it mostly just get in the way of other methods by either minimally requiring the existence of a god/ prime mover or, more frustratingly, insisting on adherence to ancient and apparently primitive beliefs?
the church (via the inquisition) in the era of galileo and the fatwas of islam equally have claimed the right to curtail people's curiosity in favour of religious dogma. we can learn from what happened with galileo. we can observe the effect of dogmatic thinking on the creativity that is permitted within islamic societies. submission is a form of servitude. the ability to change is necessary in seeking to approach truth. the ability to reject what doesn't work is also essential. when you curtail this process of alternating destruction and creativity, you doom a society to sterility.
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