text: Then Latin derivation cannot justify reducing the word "scientia" to "knowledge." The medievalists/Thomist/Rationalists/Natural Law (Catholic version) proponents use it mean a system of knowledge proceeding from premises t with logic to universal laws." This was before the widespread use of empirical observation positioned as an hypothesis to be proven, and when proven, accepted as a fact or a law. Sociology investigates and systematizes knowledge of ephemera, but within the ephemera certain trends or patterns may persist and these can be useful in many many ways.Polls are a sociological invention and we know they can reveal something ephemeral and shortly changing or ephemeral and roughly consistent.