We discussed what makes something "scientific."

For example, we discussed the role of mathematics in science, that scientific results often involve mathematics. Yet mathematics itself is a pure abstraction; whereas, results from physics, chemistry, biology, etc. may be abstractions but are (meant to be) related to or reflect in some way the natural or physical world. In relating to the natural world, science may "explain" certain features of nature, examine causes and effects, codify descriptions of nature, and so on.

Another distinction between math and science is that a mathematical theorem can be proven true once and for all, while a scientific theory can only be proven wrong (or incomplete) by finding a counter-example. Instead, scientific theories are shown to be consistent with experiments and/or observations thus far, but not proven once and for all.

We discussed the importance of experiments to test a scientific theory. To be scientific, a theory should be "falsifiable," that is, it must be in principle possible to devise an experiment that would provide a counter-example to the theory. Experiments generally involve some kind of measurement, and it was suggested that somethings are not measurable and hence lie outside the framework of science.

We noted the importance of repeatability in an experiment. If theory and experiment disagree, then one or the other (or both) is incorrect or at least lacking in some way. The experiment is the test on the theory, and the repeatability is the test on the experiment.

We talked about the idea of a variable, a quantity that changes, and that in an experiment it is preferrable to have a small number of variables and even more preferrable if one can control those variables. Having a few controllable variables is crucial in the notion of repeating an experiment. It was suggested, for instance, that questions regarding political systems may have too many variables (that we cannot control) for those questions to be answered in the same way we expect a scientific question to be answered.

We considered that the question "what is science?" is itself probably not a scientific question. For example, we considered that the idea put forward by some, namely that science is (solely) the activities and culture of the group of people identified as scientists, is not testable by an experiment that could produce a counter-example. Thus, as frustrating as it may be, scientists may not be able to address the issue of what is science "as scientists."