Science and philosophy are sometimes considered two separate fields of knowledge. However, there is often considerable overlap between the two. Some might even go as far to say that, considering philosophy has its own branch dedicated to knowledge-seeking, science itself is a form of philosophy. In this series addition to “what is science?”, we’ll be more concerned with the philosophy behind scientific theory and experimentation. Some may be wondering what the point of such an article could be. Well, people outside the scientific community often see scientists as having a singular view point on the work that they do; you hypothesize, design an experiment and draw conclusions. However, it turns out that even scientists aren’t even in agreement on how science actually works. We’ll start with philosophies concerning scientific theory.
Theory
While there are many philosophies concerning theory, for simplicity sake we can broadly categorize them into realism and anti-realism. Scientific realism states that the entities proposed by scientific theories, such as atoms, electrons and protons, really do exist. Even when theories don’t quite get things right, they are on the way to finding out ultimate truths about the universe. This may sound quite obvious, however it’s more complicated than it seems. Realism itself can be subdivided into two categories: realism about theories and realism about entities. The former deals with whether scientific theories are true or false, candidates for truth or at least aims towards truth. Meanwhile, realism about entities asks the question whether they really exist or not. It may seem strange that one can believe a theory to be truth, but not the entity proposed by the theory. However, the philosopher Bertrand Russell found a way to do exactly that. In essence, he stated that the term electron doesn’t necessarily suggest the existence of an actual entity, but is merely a logical expression for an observed phenomena.1
Russell was a realist when it comes to theories but an anti-realist about entities. Anti-realism states that atoms, electrons and protons do not exist at all and are, at best, theoretical tools that allow us to predict events in the universe. While theoretically, electricity is the flow of electrons and is a phenomenon that actually exists, the theory behind electrons being the cause of it is simply our best attempts at predicting electrical events. As such, anti-realists are not too fond of causation and explanation of events. They believe that scientific truths can only be established through direct observation. Considering that atoms and particles are smaller than the light that hits our eyes, we cannot establish absolute truth about their existence.
There is much more to be said about the philosophies underlying scientific theory, such as Karl Poppers idea on falsification, Kuhn’s idea on scientific revolutions and many more which I will cite for you all.1-4
Experiment
Two methodologies that underlying scientific experiments are inductive and deductive reasoning. As is always the case in both science and philosophy, there is division between philosophers as to which is the better approach
Inductive reason can be seen as a bottom-up approach to science. An observation is made and then tested to see whether they confirm or deny a generalized statement. For example, plants A and B need water to grow, all plants observed depend on water for growth and thus all plants require water for growth. As such, inductive reason requires verification to determine whether an observation accurately confirms a generalized statement. In contrast, deductive reason works from the top-down. It begins with a theory which is used to generate a hypothesis. Data is collected to test the hypothesis and then analyzed to determine whether it is accepted or not. For example, we start with the theory that all plants require water for growth and hypothesize that apple trees require water. We therefore collect data on all apple trees and analyze them to determine whether the hypothesize is accepted or rejected. You might be able to tell that deductive reasoning requires falsification to determine whether the theory is correct or not.
So which is better? None, probably. The philosopher Rudolf Carnap believed that observation is the foundation of knowledge while Karl Popper stated that we have a psychological tendency to generalize from experience.1 Each statement is valid, which ultimately brings us back to the original point of this article, which is that not all scientists think alike about the true meaning of the work that they do. As such, the statement “that is the science” becomes a lot less clear when considering the philosophical mess underlying this field. As it turns out, a simple question such as what science even is, isn’t as easy to answer as one may think.
References
1. Hacking I. Representing and intervening: Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press; 2013.
2. Popper KR (karl R. The logic of scientific discovery. London, England: Routledge; 1977.
3. Kuhn TS. The structure of scientific revolutions. 50th ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 2012.
4. Capra F, Luisi PL. The systems view of life: A unifying vision. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press; 2016.
