People make use of symbols in communication
Scientists are people who create symbols for communication.
Science is a group of people calibrating symbols for precise communication
Science has thereby become symbol for communicating with precision.

As a symbol, science should be the object of scientific research.
Science should calibrate the exactness of science for social communication.
Scientists should validate that science carries the meaning that it is given.
Society/humanity should examine that science is valid as activity of humans.

As a symbol, science becomes an operator in society, cf. a symbol in mathematics.
As a symbol, science is given a value in society, cf. a variable in mathematics.
As a symbol, science is given status for scientists, cf. a parameter in physics.
As a symbol science fulfils the role of an operator in society, an agent for change.

Science is in many respects a symbol, a sign, an icon, identifier for something that it is not.
Every sign, word, signpost, model represents, stands for, something else.
A symbol is by definition not what it is; it is merely a redirector.
No reality, no value, no meaning whatsoever, can be given to a Symbol.

Scientists make use of symbols in many ways: mathematical symbols are best known.
Mathematics as a whole, and the models created by the use of mathematics, themselves are symbols.
Theories that are created by the use of mathematics, thus symbols, are themselves thus symbols.
Science, the social venture of the formulation of theories using mathematics using symbols is - as a whole - a symbol.

It is practical to remind here of the old Greek myth of a man called Prokrustes.
Imagine a somewhat backward peasant in a remote incestuous mountain village.
He notices that travellers on the mountain pass have no overnight lodging; he builds a hut for them.
He wishes them to feel as comfortable as he did in his bed, so he cut of where they were to long or clobbered them if they were too short, to (as we would now say) “fit the data”.

Scientists are very busy applying the “Prokrustes Principle”.
They do intensive data-fitting, to get reality to fit the model.
Their aim is to replace the experience of reality, by a model.
As that is called: “They replace the land/territory by the map”.

A symbol can be compared to a symptom; it is a facade, a front.
It is necessary to look beyond the symbol to what it represents.
The traditional term for this cloaking-effect is “occult” (hidden).
Occultism is the practice/skill to look beyond the appearance/sign.

Any occultists would systematically look beyond the symbol.
They would not, could not, replace the realisation by the representation.
Yet scientists systematically presents the description as if it is real.
For (many of) them, the model has become the norm, and held to be real.

Therefore it is necessary to regard the whole of science as a symbol, a model.
It is necessary to understand that the models of science are linguistic constructs.
As models, thus symbols, they are abstract mental conceptual semantic creations.
The symbols, the mathematics, the models, the science itself, is NOT REAL.