Science has no audience.
No, I don't mean no one reads science, though there's a lot of truth to that, readers generally preferring fiction and among the non fiction readers preferring history or their favorite political interests or post modern cleverness or "good-looking ideas" rather than good ideas (Robin Hanson's unforgettable expression in his Age of Em).
I mean that what distinguishes scientific theories and the project of scientific investigation in general, is not any of its internal properties or its methods, but its interactive conditions. Specifically, science is not addressed to an audience. Pretty much everything else humans do is -- everything from art and religion to identity and gender. Not science.
It's not a sufficient condition of science -- science still has a distinctive goal and distinctive methods and tools, but the goal must be audience-free. That's a necessary condition.
There's been a whole lot of debate over how science differs from other social practices, how scientific theories distinguish themselves from non scientific theories like religion, philosophy, spirituality, metaphor, imagination, art. Logical positivism cleverly observed that if a theory, like creationism, cannot be disproved by evidence the theory is necessarily true, but not predictive of anything in the world. Like, "ghosts exist but cannot be detected." That theory that ghosts exist is necessarily true, but doesn't predict anything in the real world. Such theories can predict anything and therefore, nothing: "If the ghosts don't like what you're doing, they will punish you. If they like it, they won't." Heads I win, tails you lose. It's a necessarily true theory. Substitute "god" or "the logic of history" or "your unconscious mind" or "the universe is a simulation/dream/demonic manipulation", all necessarily true theories, but unpredictive of anything.
Science, however, the positivists claimed, depends on its specific predictions -- the predictions test the value of the hypothesis. Popper pointed out, though, that testing could only refute a theory, not prove one, so the sciences are contingent and never certainly true, unlike the religious, metaphysical, inspirational, metaphorical, imaginative, artistic -- the entire gnomiad -- that are necessarily true. It's a lovely irony these logical positivist scientists they found: the non scientific theories are necessarily true (but not predictive) and the great virtue of science is that it's never quite true, but predictive. Kuhn, however, looking empirically at the history of science as a practice, found that the sciences don't follow this testing criterion closely. And so the flood gates of scientific behaviors opened and the current view is the circular view that whoever is engaged in science is doing science and science is whatever it is that scientists do. I think they're all sort of looking at science using a kind of Aristotelean ontology: what are its properties? What's its purpose? In the case of Kuhn, what caused it to be? And now, how does it behave?
I want to suggest a very different way to demarcate the sciences from the non sciences. It's that science isn't designed for, or addressed to, an audience. The scientific investigation is guided by wherever the evidence of the hypothesis takes it. That the earth is round and spinning is not a theory intended to appeal to an audience. Quantum theory's spooky action at a distance is not intended to comfort anyone. When Richard Feynman said that no one understands quantum mechanics, he identifies exactly the nature of science. It leads wherever the evidence and the theory takes us, even if it goes where we can't understand. That's why the imagination of science is so much wilder than the generally predictable, pedestrian, often imitative, imagination of the arts. Art is made for an audience. Science is free of that constraint.
The proof of the pudding is that when a scientific program bends to an audience, it's no longer science. I hope that's not a circular definition, but if it is, then I think we all probably agree on that definition. It's not as if people like spinning things and that's why they came up with such a spinning earth theory. Same with the wave interference in the double slit experiment. The independence of the audience is a necessary condition of scientific investigation.
Art is for audiences. Religion is for a community. Metaphors are made to help people understand a relation, and often to bias one aspect over another, the rhetorical means of motivating an audience. Metaphysics and historicism attempt to provide absolute truths to the reasoning mind.
Science, however, is not addressed to any audience. Scientific investigation follows wherever the evidence or the conjecture leads. It may lead to an incomprehensible quantum world of spooky action at a distance so that one of its greatest exponents would say that nobody understands it. It leads to a round, spinning earth, not because that will entertain or attract the mind with mystery. It's not intended to be an awe-inspiring mystery. It's just a matter of empirical observation and theoretically justified conclusion. It doesn't generate mysteries in order to uplift or captivate anyone. Its purpose is to solve those mysteries. Dark matter is not a beautiful, awe-inspiring mystery of the ages. It's a problem to the current theory, a problem to solve, not to embrace with rapture.
Of course, audience independence is not a sufficient condition. Churning out crazy theories of no interest to anyone does not qualify as scientific. The goal for the scientific investigation still has to be predictive.
So many different ways to view the world. How can we embrace them all if they conflict? Should we embrace them all? How can we compare or evaluate their merits? The common answer is, each perspective is useful in its own domain: religion for community and morality, spirituality for individual insight, metaphor for inspiration and explanation, imagination for innovation, art for all of these, and science for the material world and all the systems it includes, which includes all those other theories, spiritual, psychological, and metaphysical, and activities like art. But its intent is never to be captured by an audience.
Whether it succeeds depends on the scientist's integrity. Every scientist knows that the investigation is supposed to be free of an audience. That's why funding is such a problematic for science, and sometimes a scandal.
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