(Roughly) Daily

There is an order to the ordered search for ordered understanding…

Science (from Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

Modern science is typically divided into three major branches that consist of the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy and Earth science), which study nature in the broadest sense; the social sciences (e.g. psychology, sociology, economics, history) which study people and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g. mathematics, logic, theoretical computer science), which study abstract concepts. There is disagreement, however, on the formal sciences being a science [as they use an a priori, as opposed to empirical, methodology]. Disciplines that use science, such as engineering and medicine, are described as applied sciences…

And there is a dazzling array of “branches” of the scientific endeavor:

• Acanthochronology – study of cactus spines grown in time ordered sequence

• Acarology – study of mites and ticks

• Aceology – science of remedies, or of therapeutics; iamatology

• Acology – study of medical remedies

• Acoustics – science of sound

• Actinobiology – synonymous with radiobiologyAdenology – study of glands…

Browse dozens and dozens at “Index of branches of science,” from Wikipedia… whose contributors may be erring on the generous side, as the list includes such entries as “Hamartiology” (the study of sin) and “Taxidermy” (the art of curing and stuffing animals).

* Albert Einstein

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As we tackle taxonomy, we might recall that it was on this date in 2013 that Google experienced a five-minute outage affecting all of it’s services, including Google Search, YouTube, and Google Drive. During that brief period global internet traffic dropped 40%.