Is measuring and mixing “science”?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Continuing the discussion from Just curious how drowning a bunch of kids can be considered God's will:

Despite the thread this comes from this seems to me a potentially interesting question. Is “measuring, weighing, mixing etc” sufficient to constitute “science”?

Is having learned to avoid a certain berry because last you ate it you got the runs, science? Is having learned that a particular root tastes better mixed up with a certain bit of a certain leaf mixed in science?

What is the minimum that you would require to declare that a group was engaged in science?

2

Personally I’d say it needs one more step - extrapolation. Which leads to experimentation and comparison and quantification. Now you’re talking Science instead of just Curiosity.

3

I could be wrong, but to me science is understanding how and why our universe works the way it does, not just documenting it. For example, noting that a particular berry should be avoided is useful, but knowing why it should be avoided can be applied more generally to other things that should also be avoided. Science tries to answer the question why. The fact that the earth is round(ish) is an observation, explaining why it is round(ish) is science.

4

Attribution of the bad effects to repeatable nature rather than (say) the whims of the spirit of the berry

5

Measuring/mixing/weighing on its own, is cookery.

Science requires there to be things like observation of results, experimentation with changes and repetition with specific and testable goals or predictions.

6

I’d say science is two parts:
1. Making a falsifiable claim.
2. Testing the falsifiable claim.

I claim eating that berry gives me the runs. I don’t eat the berry and don’t get the runs. I do eat the berry and get the runs. That’s science.

7
8

I’d also say that science requires proper documentation. If you get the runs and then go “Now what did I eat today? Oh, yeah, there were those berries I hadn’t tried before.”, then that’s useful, and might be called proto-science, but it’s not there yet. But if you keep a record of all of the things you eat, and all of the times you get sick, now it’s science.

9

More that good science requires good documentation. But sloppy science is still science.

10

This is why Kenji is a cut above many chefs.

11

I would say measuring and mixing alone is almost the opposite of science. Just stating “mixing two hogsheads of baneswort with thee gills of camomile picked at moonrise, will produce a cure for the pox” is kind of antithetical to science. Unless you are actually doing some kind of experiment to backup that statement there is nothing scientific about it

12

On the other hand, measuring and mixing, combined with hypothesizing and experimenting and documenting, is how we get chemistry.

There was that TV show, Lessons in Chemistry, all about how Captain Marvel uses fancy chemistry on a cooking show to share her love of science, despite the misogyny of the station’s execs and their insistence that women can’t do science.

13

Those are the first steps. IMHO, what is further required to make that science is the willingness to draw a tentative conclusion based on the results of those tests, and then the willingness to reject that tentative conclusion if other tests provide better evidence than the initial testing to support some other conclusion.

14

In many ways cooking is chemistry.

Science is trying to find out how the universe works and why things happen the way they do.

Technology is finding ways to make use of what science discovers.

Both can involve mixing and measuring. Mixing and measuring does not define either of those things, it’s a common tool of both.

15

In general, science is an attempt to truly understand what’s happening - and specifically so that you can make predictions about what would happen if you did something new that you’d never done before.

The scientific method is the general process for accomplishing that, that our species has developed over the millenia.

Science and the scientific method are, in essence, the same if you think that there’s only the one method. If there’s multiple methods - and we have simply failed to glom on to some alternate methodology - then science and “the scientific method” are different things. …But let’s assume that the method really is just the one and true way.

Then, the closer that you get to the method, the more it is “science” and the further you are from the method, the less it is “science”.

Since the goal of science, as said, is to try and understand things at a level where it lets you make useful predictions, any testing that you do (e.g. mixing and measuring) should be with an eye towards teasing out details that hint towards a particular explanation of the underlying nature of the elements that you’re dealing with. The more that you take a structured approach to devising combinations of mixing and measuring, the more you’re doing science. Ideally, you’re creating testing tables, and populating them with results. You would sit down and think about what “mixing” really means. Does it mean ratios? Does it mean methods of mix? Might the results of mixing change depending on the external environment (temperature, altitude, lighting, etc.)?

To some extent, you might be able to do all of this and keep track of it in your head. Writing it down, though, is usually necessary - even for the average genius. So while I’d be skeptical that someone is doing science, when they’re not writing stuff down, that’s not a perfect metric.

Doubting yourself and your conclusions has generally been shown to be a very useful component of the method. Being able to walk others through your steps, ideas, and results - and actually doing that - are all strong indicators of a devotion to science. Making sure that they can do the same thing, and that they can’t come up with better explanations and better predictions than you, would both add to that.

Science isn’t binary. More sciencey is more sciencey. Less is less. You’d have to know everything a person is doing - including inside their head - to be able to properly rate it. The simple phrase, “measuring and mixing” is to vague to be able to give a meaningful score. Could be a 0. Could be a 3.5. It’s probably not a 10.

ETA: And looking at the linked thread, I’d note that for most of human history, advancement in capabilities appears to have come more from luck than from gaining an innate understanding of things. Most people for most mixes and measures are at a zero if they haven’t been exposed to and trained in the scientific method.

16

The measurement (including weighing) of physical qualities, controlling/monitoring distributions of material, defining and transforming between systems of measurement, calibration of instruments used for measurement, and the estimation of precision, bias, and other sources of error to statistical bounds of confidence is the science of metrology.

Stranger

17

Well, let’s see.

Science, as I understand it, is developing a hypothesis and then testing to see if the hypothesis works by comparing it to a control group.

Let’s see. I added a cup of butter to my cookie dough the last time. It was good, but it came out just a little bit flatter than I like, but when I used 3/4 of a cup, they were too puffy. Would those examples qualify as tests against control groups?

I think measuring and mixing could be considered science. It depends on how you approach it.

18

In my world measuring and mixing and lots of math are a science. A Medical science.
(You can only art it out so long, like this)

My food prep is a Science on a good day. A bad day? Hit or miss.

Any way Pharmacists measure and weigh much. Is Pharmacy a Science?

19

Pharmacy is a science based profession. Pharmacology is the science behind it.

20

Nice. Thank you.