SCIENCE (si'ens), (Heb. mael-daw' ; Gr.
7140'crts,gno'sz's ; Lat. scientia).
The word science occurs only twice in the Bible (Dan. i :4 ; I Tim. vi :20). It is elsewhere rendered "knowledge." In the passage, Dan. i :4, the expression "cunning in knowledge" may well be rendered "skillful in understanding or knowl edge." The Greek term is used about thirty times in the New Testament, and except in the above passage is rendered "knowledge." It should be so translated here, and the passage would read "oppositions (or contradictions) of knowledge falsely called," i. e., the higher knowledge of Christian and divine things which false teachers boast of.
In a general way we may say that science means knowledge, emphatically so called; that is, knowl edge of principles and causes.
It has its name from bringing us (epi stasin) to some stop and boundary of things, taking us away from the unbounded nature and mutability of particulars; for it is conversant about subjects that are general and invariable. This etymology
given by Nicephorus (Blemmida), and long be fore him adopted by the Peripatetics, came orig inally from Plato.
Sir William Hamilton, in his Lectures on Logic, defined science as a 'complement of cognitions, having, in point of form, the character of logical perfection, and in point of matter, the character of real truth.' Science is knowledge evident and certain in itself, or by the principle from which it is de duced, or with which it is certainly connected. It is subjective, as existing in amind—objective, as embodied in truths—speculative, as resting in attainments of truths, as in physical science—prac tical, as leading to do something, as in ethical science. (Fleming, V ocab. Phil.)