Schick Readings in the Philosophy of Science
| The main purpose of scientific discipline is to trace, within the chaos and flux of phenomena, a consistent construction with guild and meaning. This is called the philosophy of rationalism, rational every bit in conforming with reason. And the purpose of scientific understanding is to coordinate our experiences and bring them into a logical system. |
| Thoughout history, intellectual scientific efforts take been directed towards the discovery of pattern, organization and structure, with a special emphasis on order. Why? Primarily, the control of the unpredictable driven past the fear of the unknown. Those who pursue answers are known as scientists. The principal occupation of a scientist is problem solving with the goal of understanding the Universe. Scientific discipline is founded on the hope that the world is rational in all its observable aspects. Its possible that there may exist some facets of reality which prevarication beyond the power of human reasoning, that there may exist things with explanations that we could never grasp, or no explanation at all, but the fact that the world is rational is connected with the fact that it is ordered. |
| Scientific discipline is also a dialogue between mankind and Nature. Science is far from a perfect musical instrument of cognition, but it provides something that other philosophies neglect to, concrete results. Science is a ``candle in the nighttime'' to illuminate irrational beliefs or superstitions. Science does not, by itself, advocate courses of human action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible consequences of culling courses. In this regard, science is both imaginative and disciplined, which is central to its power of prediction. How does science differ from art? Both employ imagination and creativity, just art is free and unconstrained. Ideas in science must conform with experimentation and observation. In other words, science tin can be tested and must conform to Nature (i.e. reality). Although we note that this statement gets fuzzy when discussing breakthrough physics. Science is whatsoever system of knowledge that is concerned with the concrete world and its phenomena and entails unbiased observations and/or systematic experimentation. In full general, a science involves a pursuit of knowledge roofing full general truths or the operations of fundamental laws of nature. Science does not, by itself, advocate courses of human activeness, but it tin can certainly illuminate the possible consequences of alternative courses. In this regard, scientific discipline is both imaginative and disciplined, which is central to its power of prediction. Science tin be separated from pseudo-science past the principle of falsifiability, the concept that ideas must exist capable of being proven fake in order to exist scientifically valid. The keystone to science is proof or evidence/data, which is not to be dislocated with certainty. Except in pure mathematics, nothing is known for certain (although much is certainly fake). Central to the scientific method is a organization of logic. I personally use the seven signs of crank science to identify pseudo-science. |
Scientific Method:
| Aristotle believed that scientific noesis comes from the logical inferences built from indisputable, self-evident truths. Just where exercise those truths come up from? Aristotle's reply was that we induce them. Induction is the acquiring of knowledge from our senses. Thus, consecration became the dominant method of science for 2000 years. Today nosotros recognize that there are two types of science, rational and empirical. Rational refers to statements coming from ideas, while empirical refers to science based on observations. Rational science is almost ideas, whereas empirical science is about experiences connected to the real earth. Rational science starts from self-evident truths and moves by rigorous logical arguments to a conclusion near some new truth, this is called deduction. Empirical science starts from a hypothesis which implies a tentative truth, and uses multiple observations to achieve a conclusion near the truth of the original hypothesis, this is chosen induction. Scientific arguments of logic basically take on four possible forms; ane) the pure method of deduction, where some conclusion is drawn from a gear up of propositions (i.e. pure logic), 2) the method of induction, where ane draws general conclusions from detail facts that appear to serve equally evidence, three) by probability, which passes from frequencies within a known domain to conclusions of stated likelihood, and 4) by statistical reasoning, which concludes that, on the average, a certain per centum of a set of entities will satisfy the stated conditions. |
| The fact that scientific reasoning is so frequently successful is a remarkable property of th e Universe, the dependability of Nature. To support these methods, a scientist as well uses a large amount of skepticism to search for any fallacies in hypothesis or scientific arguments. In society to depict conclusions, a scientist uses the scientific method, a rigorous standard of procedure and word that sets reason over irrational belief. Key to the scientific method is a system of logic. Note that there is an emphasis on falsification, non verification. If a theory passes whatsoever test then our confidence in the theory is reinforced, simply it is never proven correct in a mathematically sense. Thus, a powerful hypothesis is ane that is highly vulnerable to falsification and that tin exist tested in many ways. |
Crusade and Consequence:
| Newtonian or classical physics, and all sciences derived from physics, rests squarely on the principle of locality, the thought that correlated events are related by a chain of causation. The necessary connection in cause and consequence events is the substitution of energy, which is the foundation of information theory => knowledge is ability (energy). Also primal to cause and effect is the concept that an object'due south being and properties are contained of the observation or experiment and rooted in the material reality of Nature. |
| Causal links build an existence of patterns that are a manifestation of the Universe'southward rational social club. Does the chain of cause and upshot e'er end? Is at that place an `Initial Cause'? |
Reductionism:
| Reductionism is the belief that any complex prepare of phenomena can be defined or explained in terms of a relatively few elementary or primitive ones. For case, atomism is a form of reductionism in that it holds that everything in the Universe tin be broken down into a few elementary entities (elementary particles) and laws and interactions among them. Mod chemistry reduces chemical properties to ninety or so basic elements (kinds of atoms) and their rules of combination. To a reductionist, once a set of equations or mathematical relations has been constitute to depict a system, then the beliefs of the system is considered to exist explained. |
| Reductionism is very like to, and has its roots from, Occam'southward Razor, which states that between competing ideas, the simplest theory that fits the facts of a problem is the 1 that should exist selected. Reductionism was widely accepted due to its power in prediction and conception. It is, at least, a good approximation of the macroscopic earth (although it is completely wrong for the microscope world, run across breakthrough physics). Too much success is a dangerous thing since the reductionist philosophy led to a wider paradigm, the methodology of scientism, the view that everything can and should be reduced to the properties of matter (materialism) such that emotion, aesthetics and religious experience can be reduced to biological instinct, chemical imbalances in the brain, etc. The 20th century reaction against reductionism is relativism. Modern science is somewhere in betwixt. |
Determinism:
| Closely associated with reductionism is determinism, the philosophy that everything has a cause, and that a particular crusade leads to a unique effect. Another manner of stating this is that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given them, nothing else could happen. Determinism is the theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes that preclude free will and the possibility that humans could have acted otherwise. The theory holds that the Universe is utterly rational because complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unerring noesis of its future is also possible. Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, in the 18th century framed the classical formulation of this thesis. For him, the nowadays state of the Universe is the effect of its previous state and the cause of the state that follows it. If a listen, at any given moment, could know all of the forces operating in nature and the respective positions of all its components, it would thereby know with certainty the time to come and the by of every entity, large or small. The Persian poet Omar Khayyam expressed a similar deterministic view of the world in the concluding half of 1 of his quatrains: "And the offset Morning of Creation wrote / What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read." Indeterminism, on the other hand, though not denying the influence of behavioral patterns and certain extrinsic forces on human actions, insists on the reality of free choice. Exponents of determinism strive to defend their theory equally compatible with moral responsibleness by proverb, for case, that evil results of sure actions can be foreseen, and this in itself imposes moral responsibility and creates a deterrent external crusade that can influence actions. |
| Implicit to determinism is the fact that every event happens of necessity. Information technology has to happen; the Universe has no choice. Determinism also implies that everything is predictable given enough information. Since Newtonian or classical physics is rigidly determinist, both in the predictions of its equations and its foundations, then there is no room for hazard, surprise and creativity. Everything is as it has to be, which gave ascension to the concept of a clockwork Universe. |
Laws of Nature:
| The rise of science during the Age of Reason produced the idea that there is a hidden order in Nature, which is mathematical in form and could be uncovered by investigation. This hidden guild could be expressed in the course of mathematical principles, or laws of Nature. |
| Direct connections between events are normally apparent to the senses. But the underlying causes associated with the laws of Nature are much more subtle. Observations of events are not generally intelligible. Often phenomenon requires an abstruse theoretical framework to form a context for measurements in order to link them into a framework of understanding. This framework is called a scientific theory. |
| The laws of Nature are attempts to capture the regularities of the world systematically. The beingness of regularities in Nature is an objective fact, thus we do not impose laws onto Nature. While the form of the laws are human inventions, they reflect, albeit imperfectly, real properties in Nature. It is this absolute invariance of the laws of Nature that underwrites the meaningfulness of the scientific enterprise and assured its success. |
| Truly basic laws of Nature establish deep connections betwixt different physical processes. When a new law is developed, information technology is tested under different contexts which often leads to the discovery of new, unexpected phenomena. This demonstrates that we are determining real regularities in Nature, non imposing them with our scientific structures. The laws of Nature are eternal, absolute and have an independent existence outside the physical conditions of an experiment. Success in the scientific method rests on the reproducibility of the results. An experiment is repeated and the same laws of Nature apply, merely the initial conditions of the experiment tin can be varied. In that location is a articulate functional separation betwixt laws and initial conditions, like to the Platonic Forms. If Shakespeare, Beethoven, or van Gogh had non been born it's unlikely that anyone else would have ever achieved what they did. Only is this true for scientists? Would someone else have discovered the classical laws of motion if there had been no Newton? Probably, because science is a collective enterprise. The solution to a scientific problem must satisfy exacting criteria and demands. These constraints do not eliminate creativity, they provoke information technology. |
Models and Theories:
| Scientific theories are essentially models of the existent world (or parts of it) and the vocabulary of science concerns the models rather than reality. Often when the term `detect' is used in a scientific model or theory (such equally the discovery of Hawking radiation) this, in fact, refers to a mathematical relationship that is revealed. A truthful discovery would refer to the observation of the miracle in Nature (with respect to Hawking radiation, noone has yet directly observed a blackness hole). |
| The relationship between a theory or model and the real system represents an important distinction. For case, how do we know when a model is merely a computational device and when does information technology actually depict reality? Scientific theories are descriptions of reality, they practice not establish that reality. Equally long as a theory sticks shut to direct experience, where common sense remains a reliable guide, and so there is confidence that nosotros tin distinguish betwixt the theory and reality. Accelerate theories in mod physics push this boundary, for case, the use of virtual particles in breakthrough physics. Their existence is never directly observed, so some might say that at that place utilize is a simple way of describing an unimaginable procedure in familiar terms. Models or theories that are wide and encompass a significant fraction of a field of science are called paradigms. Reductionism was one of the founding paradigms of science, only was not a complete expression of the truth to Nature. Still, the three hundred years of progress that accompanied reductionism was not rooted on a misconception, for this is non the role of paradigms. Rather a particular paradigm is neither right nor incorrect, but merely reflects a perspective, an aspect of reality that may prove more or less fruitful depending on the circumstances. Science may not evangelize the whole truth, but it certainly deals with truth and not dogma. |
| Science historian, Thomas Kuhn, argued that science moved in leaps. That prototype's class, led to many new discoveries, then go the standard in which new ideas are tested. Somewhen, some new experiment or observation will not fit into the current paradigm and will led to a new theory, usually by some brilliant, immature scientist. This new theory undergoes a series of phases from disbelief to grudging credence until it forms the adjacent paradigm. Each image shift, or science revolution, leads to a major stride forward in our understanding of the underlying reality. |
End of Science?:
| Given the tremendous advances in our understanding of the workings of Nature during the 20th century, the question arises whether there is the possibility that there is an end of scientific discipline, meaning the complete scientific description of all things. There are two views on this question. One view is that a complete description is indeed possible and that the fundamental questions will i day be answered. Thus, physics becomes a matter of technological advances. The second view is that Nature is inexhaustible and infinitely subtle, and then that the dialogue between human consciousness and the Universe will never end. While there is some merit to the idea that nosotros construct much of the mathematical description of science (see adjacent lecture), that description appears to apply to an objective reality which nosotros test our mathematical principles and laws. While we may refine our descriptions, theories and models, does this achieve the indicate of simply fine tuning? Nosotros take also noticed a tendency in the last few years where our questions most Nature take exceeded our ability to examination our ideas. The triumph of modern physics lies in its ability to pose such fundamental questions in a rational, mathematical mode. That such questions take a formal meaning is a considerable achievement of the homo mind. But some questions, particularly those involving subatomic furnishings and the physics of the early Universe are not testable in the normal scientific manner. This has lead to a sectionalisation of science into empirical science (one that uses the scientific method) and, what is called, ironic scientific discipline. Ironic science does not provide any testable conclusions, simply rather judges the merit of its ideas on aesthetics criteria (how complete a theory is in a mathematical sense). If empirical science ends some day, information technology is unclear whether ironic science, based on creativity ideas volition always end. |
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Source: http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/21st_century_science/lectures/lec01.html
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