The Philosophy of Science

[Resha Caner]

I'm not sure where this topic belongs. If one of moderators wants to move it, that's fine with me.

 

I've developed an obsession with the philosophy of science - I guess I need to get out more. But I seem to be in a very narrow niche. Of those interested in philosophy, few (some, but few) have a good grasp of science. Of those interested in science, few (some, but few) show any interest in philosophy.

 

In my engineering education, we were brainwashed with an "it just is" view of how things work. So, here is my question:

 

Did anyone participate in a science curriculum that acknowledged the philosophy of science?

[farmboy]

What is the philosophy of science?

[Resha Caner]

That's exactly what I would have asked a few years ago. I started off wondering if I was just uniformed, but it seems very few scientists, engineers, etc., seem to know anything about this.

 

The really long answer is in an excellent book by Martin Curd & J.A. Cover from Purdue. It is entitled "Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues", and comes in at 1310 pages.

 

If you want something easier to digest, try "Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method" By H.H. Bauer from U of Illinois.

 

I could boil it all down to the question, "What is science?", but that doesn't say much. The next most important question is, "When science claims to be objective, what does that mean?"

 

I'd have to start with the father of the discipline, a man named Karl Popper. Popper launched a huge controversy with an idea called "falsification". He claimed that science never proves a theory. He rejected what is called "induction" where general laws can be professed by testing special instances (which is about 99% of science). Instead, he claimed that theories are only tentatively accepted, and special conclusions are deduced from special tests based on that tentative acceptance until such time as some test falsifies the theory. When that happens, scientists move on to a new theory (such as when Einstein overturned Newton).

 

That's a very, very brief intro. Is that understandable?

[npts2020]

IMO you have answered "what is science" in your last full paragraph and I think few on this forum would much argue with it. As to "what is scientific objectivity", I say it is the ability to overcome preconcieved notions in order to see what ideas best fit experience. Objectivity in general cannot be perfectly defined since everyone relies on prior experience to shape their view of the world. I realize these are imperfect definitions but, like science, are the best we have at the moment and subject to change (usually incremental) when something better comes along.

[jimmydasaint]

The closest I have personally seen is the History of Science course that I did not actually take at University. Karl Popper was a polymath who did not only define the parameters of the hypothetico-deductive method. Personally I have found that the "Aha!" moment comes from a subconciously understood model of how a particular phenomenon works which then emeerges from the subconcious as an apparent moent of inspiration. For example, stuck for months at extracting a suitable culture medium for some cells that I was growing in culture, I had an "Aha!" moment and found the correct combination as I was driving home.

 

I think philosophy examines and encompasses what we mortals hold as truths in their entirety rather than examining them through the window of logic and rationality in a piecemeal and sometimes unfulfilling manner. People like Hegel would interest you in their particular "Theory of Everything" but which philosophers would you consider as particularly important to Science? Descartes, Wheeler? Even Einstein had his own particular philosophy...

[iNow]

The closest I have personally seen is the History of Science course that I did not actually take at University. Karl Popper was a polymath who did not only define the parameters of the hypothetico-deductive method. Personally I have found that the "Aha!" moment comes from a subconciously understood model of how a particular phenomenon works which then emeerges from the subconcious as an apparent moent of inspiration. For example, stuck for months at extracting a suitable culture medium for some cells that I was growing in culture, I had an "Aha!" moment and found the correct combination as I was driving home.

 

You may enjoy a quick scan of this thread:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=28482

[Resha Caner]

As to "what is scientific objectivity", I say it is the ability to overcome preconcieved notions in order to see what ideas best fit experience.

 

I don't want to assume too much about what you intended by that statement, but I have a similar view. For a long time I was a "realist", which means I thought science discovered the true properties of the world. When Newton discovered gravity, he had discovered a real thing.

 

Now I am more of an "empiricist", where gravity is a man-made concept and we use the math with the "best fit" as you put it.

 

This all fits with the "aha!" mentioned by jimmy. In philosophy that is called a "gestalt shift". The famous example is the psychology experiment where someone shows you a picture of a rabbit, and suggests instead that it is a duck. You then realize that the picture could be either.

 

The possibility that two people can look at the same thing and see something different is troubling, because it implies science is not really objective, but subjective.

[Mr Skeptic]

Did anyone participate in a science curriculum that acknowledged the philosophy of science?

 

I learned some philosophy of science in high school. I don't know if it is standard in the US, but it should be. Too many people misunderstand science, thinking either that it is absolute truth, or that science is the consensus of scientists, or some other bull. At least journalists should be required to know what science is before they do some reporting on it.

[gcol]

Nice discussion. There have been more than a few threads on this general topic. Some have become surprisingly heated. If this one continues, and remains reasonable and does not become derailed into personal hobbyhorse dead-end sidings, I shall follow it with interest.

 

Plase continue.

[Sisyphus]

Yes, there are those of us who are similarly obsessed, and those who study it. More than half my studies would fall under the categories of philosophy or history of science.

[ajb]

I have not really been exposed to the "philosophy of science" as part of my formal education.

 

In passing I am interested in the use and abuse of physical interpretation in modern physics and the philosophy of mathematics.

 

On the mathematics side of things I am somewhat of a realist. I believe mathematics "exists" independent of the human mind and that one discovers new mathematics. The modern point of view I take is that all mathematics "happens" in or between categories and I do not worry too much about the philosophical implications.

[Resha Caner]

If this one continues, and remains reasonable and does not become derailed into personal hobbyhorse dead-end sidings, I shall follow it with interest.

 

I shall do my best. It is annoying when someone with an agenda derails a conversation, but that is a common occurence on the Internet.

 

Another annoying practice comes from philosophy itself. There are those who play the role of skeptic, continually asking for definitions and clarifications ad nauseum until one is forced into a ridiculous absolutist position that is easily skewered. It produces nothing of value.

 

That is why I have found my new empiricism so freeing. I have a definite engineer's "close enough" view of science.

 

Gravity is the perfect example in so many ways. One thing Newton worried about was that he would be accused of promoting witchcraft. He kept his study of alchemy largely secret for that reason. But he also feared how others would view the "force at a distance" of gravity. What, you believe in some mysterious power that one body can apply to another across empty space without touching it?

 

It is interesting to see the tortuous route some take to defend the concept of "force", and only because they want it to be real. To be able to shrug it off as a mathematical convenience that may or may not be real opens up a world of possibilities.

 

But my concern is that science education teaches concepts such as "force" very dogmatically. Hence, my original question.

[iNow]

Is not having a rigid definition in place a requirement (as foundational) for abstracting and later extrapolating toward larger possibilities?

 

Using your example of force, you need very rigid concepts and definions of the idea to be established in order to go beyond them. One can't just "start in the ether." It's all well and good to be "open to possibilities," but you also need some solid footing as your basis in order to explore those possibilities.

[Mr Skeptic]

Another annoying practice comes from philosophy itself. There are those who play the role of skeptic, continually asking for definitions and clarifications ad nauseum until one is forced into a ridiculous absolutist position that is easily skewered. It produces nothing of value.

 

In some cases, definitions are more important than the actual conversation, and a few lines of clear speech worth thousands of ambiguous words. But in many cases such clarity is unneeded and too cumbersome.

[gcol]

I wonder if it might be useful to begin with the perhaps obvious statement that science is a discipline. A discipline worthy of the name needs great efforts of self-will or the oversight of controlling disciplinarians to keep it on track.

 

It would not be surprising if the disciplinarians of science objected most strongly to having their methods and practises scrutinised by a body of outsiders, in this case interfering philosophers.

 

A discipline that is certain of its own rigour however should surely have no worries about outside scrutiny?

 

Perhaps philosophy is ill-disciplined to an extent that science sees it as an unworthy investigator?

 

Science does at least make an attempt to identify pseudoscience. How good is philosophy at recognising pseudophilosophy?

[SkepticLance]

There is, of course, no simple answer to the question. Carl Popper made a valuable contribution with his principle of falsification. However, that is not everything.

 

My own view is that science is simply too big and complex. However, we can try to tease out some of the core principles.

 

Carl Sagan stated that the core of science is prediction. By this, of course, he meant the predictive test, which ties in with falsification. Scientific ideas have to be tested, and this is done by using them to make a novel prediction which can be, and is, tested.

 

Francis Bacon was the father of modern science. Not the only one, of course, since Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke were working on the same thing at the same time. However, Bacon wrote down the principles in an organised fashion, which no one else at the time managed to do. His main contribution was the need for empiricism. This means that scientific knowledge is advanced by testing that is based on novel observation or experiment - real world as opposed to 'back of the envelope' or mental.

 

The original was Aristotle. However, he believed firmly in logic as the road to knowledge, and taught that all new knowledge should come from the logical process. As long as we begin with a solid premise, and proceed via correct logical steps, we get to a correct conclusion. That is, of course, a total load of cobblers! That belief probably held back human progress enormously. Only since Bacon put empirical testing, instead of logic, at the forefront did science get under way properly.

 

If we combine empiricism, predictive testing, and falsification, we are getting close to the core of science.

[Mr Skeptic]

Scientific ideas have to be tested, and this is done by using them to make a novel prediction which can be, and is, tested.

 

A quibble here. There is no need for the predictions to be novel. Novel predictions are only needed to distinguish one theory from another, not to test the theory. While it may seem minor, asking that a theory make novel predictions would disqualify a theory that predicts everything we have already observed, which would be completely absurd.

[SkepticLance]

Mr Skeptic

Let me rephrase.

Novel scientific ideas need novel predictions. A new idea which simply made predictions we already knew were correct would not be of much use. The test comes when the new idea makes new predictions that we do NOT already know to be correct. Established ideas are different.

[Resha Caner]

Ahh, we're already splintering in many directions - all of them interesting. I'd like to discuss them all, but can probably only handle one at a time.

 

It would not be surprising if the disciplinarians of science objected most strongly to having their methods and practises scrutinised by a body of outsiders, in this case interfering philosophers.

 

Who says they are outsiders? Many hold scientific degrees, and some reached prominence in their field before turning to philosophy. For me the "quest" began with a "wait a minute, something's not right here" within my own discipline. But, then, I'm just an engineer, so maybe that disqualifies me as a "scientist" (defining what constitutes a scientist is a whole other debate).

 

Is not having a rigid definition in place a requirement (as foundational) for abstracting and later extrapolating toward larger possibilities?

 

Using your example of force, you need very rigid concepts and definions of the idea to be established in order to go beyond them. One can't just "start in the ether." It's all well and good to be "open to possibilities," but you also need some solid footing as your basis in order to explore those possibilities.

 

I never meant to imply that definitions are without value. Surely you know the game of which I speak. But if not, we could play it using a term like "force". What is force? Do you use dictionary definitions like "an influence on a body that causes a change in motion" (which is actually very vague). Or do we use equations, such as (force) F = ma or F = kx (which are not the same thing). But suppose we choose F = ma. Well, what is m (mass)? Hmm. How do you define that without heading into a circle? What have you really defined? And on it goes. At what point do such games become an absurdity? That is what I meant.

 

A quibble here. There is no need for the predictions to be novel.

 

Actually, this is a major debate in the philosophy of science, with supporters on all sides. Some say novel prediction carries more confirmatory power than prediction of what we already know. Some say it carries less. Some say it makes no difference. It leads to a Bayesian discussion.

Edited December 15, 2008 by Resha Caner

[fredrik]

I for one acknowledge the importance of philosophical questions in science, and in particular the foundations and developments of science (as opposed to applied science). Which gets even more important these days, in the search for theories of everything. Then I think, more than ever does any sane persons ask, what is science and what is the process whereby science proceeds?

 

Did anyone participate in a science curriculum that acknowledged the philosophy of science?

 

I remember that the one physics teacher that has made the biggest impression in the past, also had a Phd in philosophy. He had an apparently wider perspective than some of the more narrowed down teachers. He understood the entire picture, starting from the appearance of a question in the students brain. You could ask a fuzzy question, and he nailed it right on, while others would respond with the the question was unclear. He had an impressive perception about things. In particular did he understand that a significant part of many problems are asking the right questions, therefor if you reflexively reject fuzzy questions, you are missing almost the whole point.

 

Still I doubt philosophy is much of a formal merit in physics. While pure mathematics has become more of a formal merit.

 

I think this connects to several points Lee Smoling raises in the trouble with physics in the last chapter. He distinguishes between different types of personalities, and argues that all of them are important in the collective scientific process. But due to the de facto dynamics in the scientific society, strange things happens. There has been a trend of a "mathematical toying approach" to physics, rather than, asking deep and fundamental (almost a little philosophical) questions like many of the old school scientists did. The later generates have for some reasons purified and maintained the technical approaches. This might have resulted in a loss of perspective.

 

One way to gain perspective is to take a pause and ask, what I am doing, what are the important questions, and why. And what is the most rational procedure to look for the answers? Are we on the right track?

 

Those leaders who fail to acquire a wide perspective risk leading their followers out into a desert.

 

This relates the question of valuing philosophical questioning of the scientific process that the OT asked. I think it is not very much so atm, but maybe it's changing.

 

Resha, did you read smolins the trouble with physics? It's not a philosophy book, but it talks about the sociology and group phenomena in scientific communities that leads to narrowing approaches, rather than encouraging perspective. His main critics is towards string theory, who has consumed research resources out of proportion to it's potential, and he elaborates why this happened. It's not because string theorists are irrational, he argues that it is because it's the way the scientific community currently works.

 

/Fredrik

 

In passing I am interested in the use and abuse of physical interpretation in modern physics and the philosophy of mathematics.

...

On the mathematics side of things I am somewhat of a realist. I believe mathematics "exists" independent of the human mind and that one discovers new mathematics.

 

I personally think that there is actually a good overlap between the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of physics, because historically there has been synergies development of language and the development of what you can express.

 

I think connections to this also is present in the philosophy of science. If you ask what is science, one need to face also what is knowledge, and how is knowledge acquired. Some revolution in this direction is implicity in quantum theory, which focuses on the so called measurement perspective. Then we have come to mathematicall explore the constraints suggested by the representation of measurements themselves, in the sense that, what does representation theory tells us about what is possible to represent at all? The traditional reasoning after emergence of quantum theory is that this language and formalism is measurement theory somehow puts constraints on what you can say.

 

Ie. by studying the "constraints of language" (ie mathematics), you can infer to a certain extent what is speakable (physics). Ie. the properties of representation and language are used to CONSTRAIN by consistency, what how any consistent model may look.

 

However, one must not forget that these constraints, are still of conjectural nature only, because it's really a "theory of language" we are using to constrain what's spekable. The consistency refers to a theory of language, whos questioning will take us deeper. This leads us somehow into the philosophy of mathematics as well. The formalised measurement theory and theory of representations, that is the core of the mathematical formulation of quantum theory is not proven. Therefore there might be a danger to extrapolate these constraints from a conjectured unique language on what we can say and learn about nature.

 

Questions like this, IMO usually fall under the domain of philosophy of physics, mathematics and science. But they are nevertheless IMHO at least of deep importance.

 

I don't share the realist view of mathematics though. But I think also the very reference to human mind is incomplete. By a similar token that the language of physics, constrains the physics itself, the representation of theory constraints theory itself. But theory can also be seen as a evolved state of knowledge, and if you connect knowledge to information and measurements in modern physics, one is lead to question the very notion of physical law.

 

A realist view of mathematics, and a realist view of physical law seems to me closely related. But what if this is not so? Again this is philosophical questions, does that mean a scientists must not ask them? I think it's the other way around, I think the question must be faced straight. It is risky to think that questions we don't understand are not important.

 

/Fredrik

[Resha Caner]

did you read smolins the trouble with physics?

 

No, I haven't read it. I took a peek at Amazon, and it looks interesting. I especially liked the opening paragraph:

 

From the beginning of physics, there have been those who imagined they would be the last generation to face the unknown. Physics has always seemed to its practitioners to be almost complete. This complacency is shattered only during revolutions, when honest people are forced to admit that they don't even know the basics.

 

It sounds very much like Kuhn.

[fredrik]

No, I haven't read it. I took a peek at Amazon, and it looks interesting. I especially liked the opening paragraph:

 

From the beginning of physics, there have been those who imagined they would be the last generation to face the unknown. Physics has always seemed to its practitioners to be almost complete. This complacency is shattered only during revolutions, when honest people are forced to admit that they don't even know the basics.

 

It sounds very much like Kuhn.

 

Yes it sure does

 

Smolins book is not at all a book on a theory or philosophy of science, it is rather a book containing some of the history of modern physics, and some of the problems of the apparently stalled progress. But it still contains strong philosophical angles. I personally feel that his pointing out how people in group work, is nothing new, it's more of a statement of observation. And what I think he wants with his book, is to provoce a change of attitude among those who has power to hire or not hire young students. He argues in this direction by pointing out how the scientific society has worked. To see, that progress takes more than mastery of technical tools. During normal science the technical tools is enough to make progress, then when there is need for paradigm shift (Kuhn indeed) the technicians might be stumped, and a creative mind is needed to guide them. So we need both the overview/diversity and specialisation. And not always does the technical geniouses and creative geniouses come in the same package.

 

It seems that you have already a decent background in philsophy of science, and in that case I think the book contains nothing new. Still it might be an interesting read since it comes not from a philosopher but from a physicist.

 

I think the point you raised in your first post

 

Of those interested in philosophy' date=' few (some, but few) have a good grasp of science. Of those interested in science, few (some, but few) show any interest in philosophy.[/quote']

 

is also expressed in this quote from Wheeler regarding philosophy of science

 

"Philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers"

 

Either you can choose to think of this as a statement suggesting the incompetence of philosophers playing their own game, or you can (like I do) interpret it as a statement suggesting the ignorance of scientists that fail to see the importance of the philosophy of their own foundation.

 

/Fredrik

[Resha Caner]

I would interpret the quote as you did.

 

I just finished a book called "Freedom From Fear" by David Kennedy. As a whole, the book doesn't relate to this topic, but it was interesting to read about the GI bill at the end of WWII. I didn't realize many educators opposed it because they feared being overrun by the unwashed masses and losing the elite, liberal nature of college education.

 

Despite the many benefits of the GI bill (and though I'm no liberal), I think education has become a bit more pragmatic and brutish. The idea is to push hordes of people through as fast as possible so they can go to work. When I think back on my engineering education, I realize it was very narrow.

[gcol]

When I said in an earlier post "Would it not be surprising if the disciplinarians of science objected most strongly to having their methods and practises scrutinised by a body of outsiders, in this case interfering philosophers." I was alluding, tongue in cheek, to your general take on the reaction to the bill of rights.

 

It is merely human nature to pull up the drawbridge and protect what we have. the scientific community is no different here. It may shout its ideals of welcoming new ideas from the battlements, yet the drawbridge is barely surmountable to those wishing to objectively scrutinise the working practices of the defenders.

 

Perhaps scientists, being only human, react as any other would if their holy cow is threatened.

[Mokele]

I've actually had some discussions with 'philosophers of science' and one thing that limits the usefulness of their analysis to broad strokes is that they don't really get the 'nitty gritty' of science. They understand the general issues, but, especially in complex topics like biology, they can't wrap their heads around all the tiny details and problems (how do you do true repeated tests when every animal is different? How do you account for past events you have no way of detecting but which influence your experiment? How do you deal with animals learning during the test? How do you deal with the non-independence of individuals, since they're all related at some level? What about testing hypotheses about extinct species? Etc.)

 

Basically, there's a tendency within science to see "philosophers of science" as "armchair generals" who don't actually understand what's involved with actually getting your hands dirty.