Science is a word that is used a lot. People often appeal to science: “Science says…” and “Trust the science!” Other people attack science and try to undermine it.

What is science, that garners such attention? Is science really that special and different? How did it come about, and why only in one place, Renaissance Europe? How does science actually work? In a series of essays, I hope to address some of these questions.

We separate fiction into categories, or genres: romance, mystery, historical, and of course science fiction and fantasy. Such categorization is useful as we may prefer romance over science fiction, or fantasy over mystery.

But the mechanism of categorization can be puzzling. How do we delineate what is and is not science fiction?