But what I mean by a "science", both for the purpose of this classification and in general, is the life devoted to the pursuit of truth according to the best-known methods on the part of a group of men who understand one another's ideas and works as no outsider can. It is not what they have already found out which makes their business a science; it is that they are pursuing a branch of truth according, I will not say, to the best methods that are known at the time. I do not call the solitary studies of a single man a science. It is only when a group of men, more or less in intercommunication, are aiding and stimulating one another by their understanding of a particular group of studies as outsiders cannot understand them, that I call their life a science. It is not necessary that they should all be at work upon the same problem, or that all should be fully acquainted with all that it is needful for another of them to know; but their studies must be so closely allied that any one of them could take up the problem of any other after some months of special preparation and that each should understand pretty minutely what it is that each one's of the others work consists in; so that any two of them meeting together shall be thoroughly conversant with each other's ideas and the language he talks and should feel each other to be brethrern. In particular, one thing which commonly unites them is their common skill, unpossessed by outsiders, in the use of certain instruments, and their common skill in performing certain kinds of work. The men of that group have dealings with the men of another group whose studies are more abstract, to whom they go for information about principles that the men of the second group understand better, but which the men of the first group need to apply. At the same time the men of this first group will probably have far more skill in their special applications of these principles than have the members of the second group who understand better the principles themselves. Thus, the astronomer resorts to the student of optics, who understands the principles of optics better that he does. But he understands the applications of those principles to astronomical instruments and to work with them far better than the pure optical student does. One group may be in such wise dependent upon several other groups. Now I do not pretend that all the ramifications of dependence of one science upon another can be fully represented by any scheme of arrangement of the names of those sciences, even if we limit the kind of dependence that we seek to represent to dependence for principles.
Charles S. Peirce The Nature of Science Adirondack Summer School Lectures, 1905
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