Working definition. Science is organised inquiry that exposes claims to evidence and to communities capable of finding where they fail.
Inherited meaning
Science inherits traditions of observation, measurement, experiment, modelling, and public criticism. Its strength is not that scientists are free from perspective, but that methods and institutions can make error discoverable and correction cumulative.
Meaning in the imagination economy
AI can accelerate hypothesis formation, simulation, and analysis while also producing fluent falsehood and opaque inference. Science after AI must defend the trace from claim to evidence. Imagination proposes what could explain the world; scientific discipline determines what survives contact with it.
What changes in practice
Separate generation from validation. Preserve provenance, uncertainty, reproducibility, and negative findings. Use models to widen questions without allowing confidence of expression to substitute for evidence.