I think politics and the local/national/world stage has a huge impact on how we are able to live our lives now.
But science tells us what is possible and gives us some hard evidence about how to achieve the possibilities. All hard sciences should have an ability to explain how they work and be subject to reproducibility.
I'm a firm believer (if that computes) in the progression of scientific knowledge:
- Mathematics - the underpinning of anything that is scientific
- Physics - the observation and hypotheses of how the universe works - include astonomy
- Chemistry - how the elemental particles described within physics interact and form compounds and molecules
- Biology - how various organic molecules work together to form what we know of as life
Beyond these hard sciences are a realm of real ones, but harder to quantify as to evidence-based and reproducibility.
- Medicine
- Psychology
And then a host of pseudo sciences such as:
- Astrology
- Naturopathy
- Chiropracty
- Tea leaf reading