Two points for the answers to the universe.

Recently I came across a pop quiz given to some students at Portland Community College. One of the questions in particular stood out with alarming alacrity.
The Class: Anthropology 103—Cultural Anthropology
The Question: What is Science? [Emphasis mine]
Knee-Jerk Reaction: Outrage, Hysteria, Indignation

But Why?
I actually had to ask myself why I was offended. Was it because, in high school, I would have still been offended, but too timid and Big Brother abiding to question the question? I would have respectfully decided that the teacher had knowledge that I did not and asking such a question must mean that they knew something secret and mysterious.

Now, at 28.5, my Bachelor of Arts reaching its 1st birthday, I am seriously annoyed that anyone would have the audacity to ask such a question of ADULTS! Granted, the “quiz” was given at a community college, but hadn’t I spent 3 years at said institution expanding my small-town atrophied meat-mass and learning the beauty of cheap school and critical thinking? We’re back to the other question: why am I so offended?

Is it a reflection on my intelligence and the gnawing fact that at 28.5 I still don’t encyclopedically know the answer to the question “What is Science?” My mind races with imagery of microscopes and pipettes, the solar system, mathematical equations and Linnaean taxonomy. And yet, I don’t have a definition. Sure, I know that science is that body of knowledge that deals with the physical world and uses ye olde scientific method, or empiric observation. But does that really answer the question?

Again I ask, “What is science?” One can’t simply define this concept as if creating a block in Jeopardy. I might as well ask “what is art?” Uh-oh.
Uh-oh meaning:
--That last question prompts me to digress/regress/egress into my most-loved diatribe/propaganda/rant about art, but I won’t. Not now.
--How on Earth/Saturn/Hades can one answer for a pop quiz, for 2 points, for a 100-level college course—What Is Science?!

Perhaps I read too much into the brain-numbing absurdity of this busy-work Anthropology quiz. Maybe the average student in this class—I’m guessing 17-20 years old—does not know, or really even care, about what science is. Whatever. I still find that for 2 points of 34, the vague yet enormous query “What is science?” is very offensively overwhelmingly inappropriate.