Accumulating a body of accepted knowledge that has been systematized and formulated with reference to the discovery of general truths or the operation of general laws. Such knowledge is divided into fields, academically distinguished as disciplines or sciences, each with its own establishment, its own tradition, and its own form of enquiry, and linked mainly by the willingness of the participants in each to accept other participants as scientists and their disciplines as sciences. Science employs a combination of methods for progressively validating hypotheses, applicable only with varying degrees of cogency in the fields of the different sciences.
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: what does happen is its opponents gradually die out and the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning (Max Planck).