Science is one of our most productive ways of exploring, and trying to understand our environment. BUT IS BY NO MEANS THE ONLY WAY. The historian tries to understand the present (and occasionally predict the future) by studying the record of the human past. Religion attempts to find  certain truths by operating mostly from a platform of faith. Philosophers draw on science, history, religion, and many other fields to consolidate findings in each field and draw meaningful conclusions from them.

      Despite its many contributions to human intellectual growth, health, and general welfare, science does have serious limitations. Oddly, one of these stems from one of its greatest strengths. By dealing only with sets of phenomena that can be experienced directly or indirectly through the senses, science is necessarily excluded from other sets of phenomena. Such a qualification rules out any involvement of science in the supernatural. As the biologist George Gaylord Simpson puts it, "This is not to say that science necessarily denies the existence of immaterial or supernatural relationships, but only that, whether or not they exist, they are not the business of science."

      The philosopher George Boas has stated that "... what science wants is a rational universe, by which I mean a universe in which the reason has supremacy over both our perceptions and our emotions." Yet what science wants and what science get are often two different things. For one, nothing in the foregoing statement should be read to imply that scientists as individuals are any more rational, objective, or unemotional than anyone else. Nor is science itself necessarily independent in its thought and action from the society that surrounds and supports it; often the direction in which scientific research swings may be dependent upon the availability of funds allocated by governmental agencies to support that research.

      Further, the solutions to purely scientific problems worked out by a scientist may be used by society in a manner that is revolting to him or her. For example, Yale biologist Dr. Arthur Galston's research on the chemical basis of the shedding of leaves by plants was later used for defoliation of forests in Vietnam. Such occurrences point to a problem in how science is organized and practiced within a country rather than any inherent flaw in the scientific research itself. Science is organized and continually changing body of knowledge based on observation, generalization, and experimentation. It is a disciplined endeavor with a traditional of beliefs that have rational foundations subject to continual review and discussion. Science is separate from the scientists who have contributed to its growth. As an individual, the scientist is only a human being with human emotions and weaknesses. In pure basic research, the scientist searches for knowledge for its own sake - regardless of whether or not discoveries will benefit mankind. It is important to note that the results of as much as more than those of applied research; indeed, the former often leads to the latter. In science, applications seem to flow naturally from understandings, and the field itself seems to be inherently productive.