[kaba0]

Science is not an observable thing in itself like ant behavior is. Science (especially the scientific method) is a framework/pattern of thought that can be used to state/observe things about the universe.

Why that pattern of thought is correct in stating anything is absolutely part of philosophy.

[skybrian]

I'm under the impression that science is what scientists do, which does seem to be observable?

[RoyalHenOil]

Not exactly. Scientists are labelled scientists based on the methodologies they use and the fields they study in (which we call science).

When a person practices science, they are called a scientist. When a scientist exhibits a behavior, that behavior is not necessarily called science.

[skybrian]

That's a good clarification. However, exactly which methodologies a scientist uses doesn't seem like it makes a difference as to whether it counts as science, so long as it's still in the general spirit of the thing? This is decided culturally.

Also, it seems like there's more to understanding methodology than deciding what counts as science?

To go back to the ant analogy, people had fuzzy ideas about what an ant looks like. Some people might have called other bugs ants even though today we don't. This later led to more precise definitions under scientific taxonomy, where some species are scientifically classified as ants. But there's a lot more to understanding ant behavior than deciding what counts as an ant.

(Also, the definition of what an ant is co-evolved with scientific understanding of ants. Taxonomy existed before the theory of evolution and taxonomies were refined with genetic testing.)

[RoyalHenOil]

The heart of the science profession is the scientific method (just like the heart of the firefighting profession is fighting fires), but there are many other activities that scientists and firefighters perform that are not science or firefighting, such as writing grant proposals or doing maintenance on firetrucks.

Ants (today) are classified differently from scientists and firefighters. They are not defined based on a specific thing they do, like "anting"; rather, they are defined based on what they are, and their behavior is irrelevant to their classification.

Historically, animal categories were defined much more like professions. A fish was something that primarily swims; a bird was something that primarily flies; a worm was something that primarily slithers; a beast (the category that ants fell into) was something that primarily crawls. Even concepts like "animal" and "plant" were defined this way: animals are animated, while plants are planted in place. There was a lot of debate on how to categorize lifeforms that exhibited less-than-crytal-clear modes of locomotion, just as there is debate today on whether a given person is actually a scientist or not (do they do real science or pseudoscience? do they do a lot of science or is too little science for it to count? etc.).

This, of course, is radically different from the way we classify biological lifeforms now, although there are a few odd historical holdovers (like "fish", which is a catch-all term for aquatic vertebrates without terrestrial ancestors, even though some of them are more closely related to land animals than they are to other fish).