I think I may have to disagree with both of your definitions on what "science" is, and I believe it can be best explained by the scientific method. I think I have a reasonable place to comment on this since I am currently a graduate assistant researcher.

Science is simply a way of thinking and problem solving using the method. First you must have a hypothesis, then you come up with a way to test if the hypothesis is true, and afterwards you report the results of your test in relation to your hypothesis.

The main goal with science as a whole is to utilize natural causing truths to explain and build things that can be repeated using the procedure of tests previously preformed.

Now, the unfortunate thing with science is that much of it is up in the air. MANY of the papers written today by current PhD holders in their respective fields exist to verify or find faults in other people's tests and results. But the good thing about this heavy scrutiny is that it produces things such as the reliable technology we have today. Trust me, the fact that computers work the way they do still baffles me after researching them for years.

This leads me to my next analysis towards the pseudo-religious science zealots that mostly exist on the left. Because most of the left choose not to believe in God, that element of faith in a person's life to explain the philosophic foundation of a person's belief system must be filled by something else. Unfortunately they use science, and it's not too much different than the people carving out statues and worshiping them back in the ancient times. (People and their nature do not change, just the technology created around them.)

Since so much of science is just "magic" to those not its respective fields, coupled with the built-in nature of science to be heavily scrutinized, the combination of both leads to us witnessing the idea of science being used as a weapon by those with influential power and knowledge.

Science to the left is nothing more than an empty argument to be made to write-off having to explain anything, they rely on the unwillingness and strenuous amount of time nobody has to adequately research the debated topic, all for the sole purpose of deceptively winning the current argument and justifying their uncomfortable immoralities, illogical behavior, and harmful consequences to themselves. In the process they destroy themselves, their families, and their communities.

Sorry about this long winded message, this turned into a little bit more than I expected.

TL:DR:

Science is essentially the scientific method. The left just use the word without doing the method to justify their bat shit crazy fucking fee fees.