Science

I've already described my outline of science and nature, but now I can connect it better to the introductory and aid material.
The human body poses various limitations on the study of nature. Without the aid of technology, there are many places we cannot go and things we cannot see. Our unaided senses are limited. The desire to understand, as well as appreciate, nature has roots and connections deep in human psychology. Much of what we accept as "common knowledge is the product, not of the idle curiosity of the masses, but the disciplined and skilled investigation of comparatively few scientists.
The study of nature is not a solitary endeavor. Rather, it depends on cooperation and communication among scientists, some of whom may be widely separated in time and space. This communication includes scientific language and literature, graphs and pictures, and the specialized language of mathematics. Applications of scientific principles have resulted in increasing ability to percieve and understand nature, and science can in part be understood as an outgrowth of philosophy. Scientific research has become a profession, but it's not entirely closed to amateurs; especially with the help of groups such as the Society for Amateur Scientists. The role of families in scientific research and study is one I would like to take a closer look at, but science is much more easily associated with the educational establishment, with some connections to economics and corporations, and some to government. Science and organized religion often present competing philosophies and systems of belief. Science is most easily pursued in industrialized or at least agrarian cultures and is most strongly connected to Western civilization. Most surveys of its history acknowledge the contributions of the Greeks in early classical times, with only limited progress until the scientific revolution of the modern era.