Is Science a Social Construct?

What makes pajamas pajamas is that we call them pajamas and wear them to our bed. If we die off, there may be no more species left that call pajamas pajamas and wear them to their bed. Then pajama is no longer pajama.

Basically a social construct is anything that is something arbitrarily agreed on. Like the word pajama meaning pajama. You could have another word with the same meaning and function and nothing would change. In fact many languages have different words for same things. Similarly laws can vary, art can vary, fashion can vary. Hence it's a social construct.

Science probably is one as well, since there's probably other ways to explain reality, other methodologies and models.

"social construct" --> group of people
If there's one person, it's not social, and they're still pajamas.

But the one person uses them only because he's been acquaintanced with the social construct.

Don't be stupid.

>40 minutes
I can probably do a better job in two.
By "science" one means a systematic method for establishing models with predictive capability which describe some facet of the physical world. The core assumptions of science are that the universe exists, is observable, and is governed by a collection of laws which are consistent over space and time and can be approximated by predictive models - where the strength of these models can be inferred by observation of the universe.
When we use "science" to mean -the process of science,- that is, the "systematic method for establishing models with predictive capability which describe some facet of the physical world" we are referring to something which simply does not exist in the physical world or absent human ideation, i.e. a "social construct" by definition.
When we use "science" to mean -the predictive models themselves- established by the process of science (i.e. "scientific facts,") we are again not talking about something which exists in the physical world at all, but rather a construct which exists only in the human mind as a means of rationalizing the properties of the physical world.
When we use "science" to mean -the actual properties of the physical world- which we cannot directly know but which exist independently of human thought altogether, we are not talking about a social construct.
"Science" doesn't refer to a singular thing, but rather refers to a suite of concepts that naturally group together (the process, that which the process produces, and that which the process hopes to approximate.) These fall into different ontological categories but co-occur in a natural way and (ideally) are distinguished by context, so we use one label to refer back to all of them. Especially colloquially where we are more concerned with the impressions things give than with the things themselves.

what if science was an onomatopoeia?

However, while "the 'systematic method [...]' is a pure idea people have created" is a trivially true and uncontroversial statement, there is a bait and switch tactic which revolves around equivocating two different meanings of "social construct." "Pure idea which people have created" is not the same thing as "arbitrary and meaningless choice no more valid and no more strongly corresponding to/effectively interpreting reality than its alternatives," but one can prove "science is a social construct" with the former meaning and then slyly pretend that they have actually proven it with the latter. That's pretty much the essence of the "science wars" and postmodern encroachment on science.

So the right way to deal with that is recognizing the fallacy, not sperging out any time someone uses the phrase "social construct" and blithely insisting that god or nature itself imprinted the scientific method on our brains. That's the takeaway.

social construct is something that constructed by society i.e. rules of that society.
science is not social construct, because it doesn't depend on society, but the concept of episteme can vary in societies and so episteme is a social construct

This thread has been surprisingly educational. I've honestly never thought of that argument in this way. Thank you!