Abstract

What are the characteristics of the modern sciences? Efforts to define ‘science’—to find necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of the word—are generally thought to have failed. But the word can still be used as a ‘family-resemblance’ term. Even if there is no characteristic shared by all the sciences, there are features found among them by which they resemble one another. Within each science, we can distinguish between individual and social practices, the former being those that can be engaged in (at least in principle) by individuals. We can also distinguish four levels of scientific practice: the operational, the phenomenal, the theoretical, and the metatheoretical. The question ‘Is science Western?’ has different answers, depending on which of these levels one focuses on.