8/21/2022
In this episode of Strange Science, we provide a introduction to the philosophy of science in order to ask a simple question: does science still need philosophy? We’ll examine scientific claims about observation, justification, heuristics, and scientific independence from social & political factors. While some really brilliant scientists think philosophy is useless to science, this video will show just a tiny portion of the philosophical presuppositions scientists rely on everyday while they’re sciencing.
Citations:
French, Steven. Science: Key Concepts in Philosophy. Buy here!
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While some really brilliant scientists, like Stephen Hawking & Neil deGrasse Tyson, think philosophy is useless to science, this video will show just a tiny portion of the philosophical presuppositions scientists rely on everyday while they’re sciencing.
Of all the things in our modern life, science has probably had the most impact on modern society. The technological breakthroughs made in just the past century would have completely confounded humanity just a century prior. Because of science, I’m able to record and edit this video and post on a digital infrastructure called the internet for your viewing pleasure.
But, what is science? How does science work? How do scientists do science? How do they generate scientific theories? How do we test them? What do theories tell us about the world, if anything? Is science influenced by social & political factors? These are just an itty-bitty fraction of the questions philosophy of science ponders over.
One thing to help distinguish science from philosophy of science is that most philosophers of science love science, but most scientists seem to hate philosophy of science (though #notallscientists). Physicist Richard Feynman famously said, “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” Of course, if birds could understand ornithology, it’s hard to deny it might be very useful to them.
Let’s start with the simplest question, “What is science?” We might says, “Science is a structure based on facts.” This seems pretty intuitive. But, many scientists would disagree saying we shouldn’t just become archivists of facts, but go beyond in such a way as to learn the laws that govern facts. Or, we should actually be trying to find new ways to understand facts. But, how sure are we about what can be considered a fact? If we have doubt over this, we might have to agree with geologist and zoologist Stephen Jay Gould that, “In science, ‘fact’ can only mean “confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.” As you can see, our initial statement isn’t as certain as it initially appeared to be. In this video, we’re going to be asking questions and problematizing our beliefs about observations, justifications, heuristics or the study of methods and models, and the alleged independence of science from the cultural & political realm.
The starting point for philosophy of science naturally seems to be observation. Science is a method of inquiry that relies on empirical observations after all. So, how do we go about observing things? Well, the obvious answer is to use your eyeballs & earballs. The eye is often described like a camera. The images we see are imprinted onto our retinas and sent to our brain parts.
This might bring us to the conclusion that if anyone looks at an object in the same way we do they would see the exact same thing. However, such a belief is dubious at best. We must also ask how secure are our observational statements? Look at the famous duck/rabbit picture. Is it a duck or a rabbit? The fact we can’t be certain can lead to problems from the merely theoretical to the geo-political.
We can also look at this: this is called a Necker cube. It is not clear whether the lines are in front or in back, so different observers might get different results. Even our cultural context could effect what we see. The Necker cube is a creation of perspective in Western art. People from another culture might not even see a cube, but just some straight lines. This shows there is more to seeing than just the eyeball.
As philosopher of science Stephen French says, “What you see isn’t just determined by the light falling on your retina. It is determined by a host of other factors, by your frame of mind, by your prior beliefs, by my suggestions.” (pg. 64)
There’s a well-known story of Galileo Galilei trying to convince his colleagues that he had discovered objects revolving around the planet Jupiter, satellites that would later become known as the Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede, & Callisto).
Mind you, his colleagues had never used a telescope before, it being a relatively recent invention, and Galileo had built this one. His colleagues were skeptical that the objects being shown in the telescope were not artifacts of some defect with the telescope itself. Furthermore, Galileo couldn’t really describe the physics of how the telescope worked; he just knew it magnified things. Galileo made the Jupiter observations in 1610, but the theory of optics which explains how a telescope works would not be invented until the 1630s by philosopher Rene Descartes, and fully fleshed out by Isaac Newton in the 1670s.
Well, certainly Galileo could have just pointed the telescope at an earthly object and prove that it magnified objects. But, this too remained unconvincing. “The problem is that observation statements typically presuppose theory and so they are only as secure as the theory they presuppose.” (68) Galileo’s observations were at odds with Aristotelian astronomy, which had dominated Western thought for almost two millennia at this point. We’ll talk in greater detail later about Aristotelian astronomy, but one of its beliefs is that the laws that govern the heavens are fundamentally different than the laws which governed the earth. Galileo’s colleagues had no reason to believe that just because an earthly object was magnified, that the same thing was occurring with heavenly objects.
The observations Galileo was making simply didn’t have the theoretical background to be deemed as legitimate.
How secure are our observations? How are our observations justified as legitimate? This is the problem of justification. This is also known as the problem of demarcation, how do we demarcate between scientific statements & pseudoscientific statements? We actually did a whole video about this topic, so we won’t spend as much time on justification in this video. Just to go over the basics:
Verificationism – Verificationists believe that in order for a statement to be meaningful, you must be able to verify it. My hypothesis is true if I can go find an example of it somewhere. If we just look at the central tenet of verificationism, “A statement is meaningful if it can be verified.” we must ask, is this statement itself meaningful and is it verifiable? What possible criterion could we use to verify that this statement is in fact meaningful? So, the central tenant of verificationism is meaningless.
Falsificationism – Opposed to verificationism is falsification. Falsification requires us to only accept confirmations tentatively, openly look for ways to disprove our hypothesis, and, if falsifying evidence presents itself, cast our failed hypothesis into the dustbins of history like a prom-night baby. For the falsificationist, inability to refute a scientific statement is not a virtue, but a vice. The ability to refute an hypothesis is what demarcated a scientific statement from a pseudoscientific statement.
Yet, it might not always be clear what it is that is being falsified by contradicting evidence. Is it merely the hypothesis itself? Or, does it include the numerous different theories which underpin any hypothesis?
Let’s look at the problem of Dark Matter in astronomy. A long time ago, in a far off land, there was some scientist studying the way galaxies rotate. She assumed, that just like our solar system where the planets furthest from the sun orbit slower than those closer, that the stars at the edge of the galaxy would move slower than those at the galactic core. This is supported by both Newtonian gravity and General Relativity.
However, the scientist was shocked to find that not only were the outer stars not moving slower, but they were in fact moving as fast as the galactic core. Now, this isn’t in and of itself, contradictory. If the outer sections of the galaxy have sufficient mass, then they would be expected to move at that speed. Yet, based on all the visible matter in the galaxy, there was no where near as much mass needed to do this, even if you add up black holes, and neutron stars, and other bizarre insanely massive objects, you don’t even come close. At these speeds, there shouldn’t be enough gravity present to prevent stars being flung out of the galaxy left right up and down.
There’s a couple of answers as to why this problem is occurring. Either there is some dark particle that doesn’t interact with light or really anything except through gravity which means our standard model of particle physics is wrong or at the least very incomplete, or the laws of gravity work differently at the galactic scale than they do at the planetary scale. If it is the latter, that means General relativity is simply wrong. If we take a falsificationist attitude, we may very well have to throw out general relativity itself. The problem is that General Relativity does accurately predict a number of other phenomena which have not been falsified: gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, the red-shifting of light by gravity, etc.
Of course, General relativity works just fine if you infer there must be some type of dark matter which exists. However, such an inference requires that you add so much dark matter that 90% of all matter in the universe is matter we can’t see or interact with. Can it really be the case that less than 10% of all mass in the universe is visible?
So, how do we figure this quandary out? With more experiments baby!
The reason we infer dark matter exists is not just because galaxies are spinning way too fast. Gravity bends light around it in a phenomena called gravitational lensing, also predicted by General Relativity. When we look at the galaxy we see this occurring all over even though the visible matter doesn’t have enough mass.
The observation of the bullet cluster sealed the deal that general relativity isn’t wrong. The bullet cluster is two clusters of galaxies that smashed into each other. Because of the astronomical distances involved in interstellar space, the stars in the galaxy move right passed each other. But, the gas which makes of a majority of the visible mass in galaxies doesn’t. As you can see in this picture, the gas has been pulled out of the clusters and is currently in the center. If General relativity is wrong, then we would expect to still see the majority of mass in the center with the gas. But, when we use our good ol friend gravitational lensing, we see it with the stars which matches our predictions of what dark matter is like. General relativity is saved.
So, does this mean we have to throw out the standard model of particle physics? Again, there are a number of other predictions that come with particle physics which have been tested and not falsified. It’s probably best to just assume our understanding of quantum mechanics is severely incomplete, which makes a lot of sense considering how bizarre quantum mechanics is.
One last thing about falsificationism. Just because your experiment appears to falsify your hypothesis, doesn’t necessarily entail your hypothesis is wrong. It could also be caused by an improperly modeled experiment, or the machines being used are defective or calibrated incorrectly.
Next, we’ll talk about Heuristics. Heuristics comes from the Greek work heurisko which means “I find.” Heuristics is ultimately the study of methods, models and approaches used in discovery and problem solving. Heuristics is important because it helps us realize our cognitive biases and shows much of the context behind our observations.
In our everyday lives, we typically use an everyday heuristic or common sense. This would be called a non-standard heuristic because it doesn’t rely on the laws of probability.
There’s also a Representativeness heuristic. This is where the conclusions are based on the expectation that a small sample size will be representative of the parent population. This suffers from a number of problems. If your sample size is too small, you can’t reliably generalize to the larger population. Also, if your sample size doesn’t represent the diversity of the larger population, then again, your results are going to be at best skewed and at worst useless.
Another common heuristic is Ockham’s Razor which can be interpreted as “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Just as a note: it isn’t clear that William of Ockham ever actually said this, but that’s beside the point. In the scientific context, Ockham’s Razor simply states the simplest explanation is probably the right one. So, if you have multiple different theories with comparable explanatory power, you should use the one which is most simplified discarding those assumptions which do not actually improve the explanations. Again, this seems to be intuitively a good idea. But, how exactly does one find the “measure of simplicity.” Despite multiple measures being used, it is generally considered there is no meta-simplicity which transcends any theory. In other words, there appear to be as many different measures of simplicity as there are theories themselves, and the task of choosing between measures of simplicity appears to be every bit as problematic as the job of choosing between theories.
Heuristics also tries to find internal inconsistencies in theories. For instance, physicist Niels Bohr famously created one of the earliest models of what an atom should look like. We’ve all probably seen this model. If we take the simplest atom, hydrogen, we see one proton in the nucleus and an electron orbiting it. Bohr based this model on assumptions made from classical physics. Bohr said that when electrons gain energy they move to a higher orbital, and if they gain enough energy they can escape the atom by moving beyond the potential orbitals an atom has.
Now, this model has several problems. We’ll look at the internal inconsistency first though. Say sub-atomic particles did behave in the way classical physics describes objects. Classical physics says objects that accelerate radiate energy. If this were true for electrons, they would radiate energy until their orbits decayed crashing them into the nucleus, meaning no atoms, no Niels Bohr, no you and no me. So, Bohr’s model is inconsistent with classical physics because he refused to believe electrons radiated energy.
The other problem is that sub-atomic particles don’t follow the rules of classical physics; they behave according to quantum mechanics. The idea that an electron would orbit the nucleus is nonsense because subatomic particles have no fixed position, something necessary for anything to orbit anything else. Electrons exist as probability fields. This picture shows it well. The brighter areas are where the greatest probability of an electron exists. The more energy an electron has, the greater the range of the probability field is till it extends outside of the atom altogether.
When we ask how science works, we might be inclined to say new theories are constructed on the basis of old theories. But, many philosophers of science reject the progressive view of science. Philosopher Thomas Kuhn described scientific models as relying on certain paradigms or disciplinary matrixes. A paradigm sets the rules, determines the central problems of a scientific field, delineates the accepted methodology and the criteria/justification for discovering the solution of problems. New scientists are indoctrinated into the paradigm to believe this is normal science. A paradigm is the normative standards which determine scientific inquiry.
Kuhn said that paradigms often are challenged by scientific revolutions that completely upend the existing paradigm in order to replace it with another.
Let’s return to Aristotelian astronomy versus Galilean astronomy. Aristotelian astronomy was geo-centric positing that the Earth was at the center of the cosmos and all other objects revolved around it in perfect circles. The objects in the heavens were perfect spheres and followed different laws than those on Earth. So, when Galileo showed his colleagues these objects revolving around Jupiter, this flew in the face of Aristotelian astronomy which stated everything must revolve around the Earth. A similar challenge is made by asserting a heliocentric model of the universe where the Earth and other heavenly bodies revolve around the sun.
When Galileo looked through his telescope, contrary to heavenly objects being perfectly spherical, he observed objects that were neither perfect nor always spherical. The earth itself is more pear-shaped than spherical. Furthermore, when the orbits of planets were carefully examined, they were found to be elliptical not perfect circles.
Despite his colleagues stubbornness, Galileo continued to collect data over a long period of time. Other astronomers using telescopes began to see the same observations that Galileo had. Eventually, it got to the point where there was so much evidence contradicting the Aristotelian model that there was a paradigm revolution in astronomy. The Aristotelian model simply didn’t have explanatory power anymore. Down with Aristotle; long-live Galileo.
Finally, the last question we want bring up is science independent of its social context? Short answer: no. We did a similar video about this regarding math where we ask “is math racist” that you should totally check out.
Social factors may determine what science investigates. For instance, during the cold war, a great deal of money and political will was put into rocket science. This wasn’t done because politicians wanted to escape the surly bounds of Earth and discover all the cool shit in the solar system. This was done in order to develop rockets which could carry nuclear bombs from anywhere on the planet to the USSR, where they would promptly explode. Now, thankfully, that never happened. But, we did get all this cool understanding of the solar system from sending stuff into space to look around.
We can also look at how social factors determine how science investigates things. Experiments on humans are often constrained by a number of ethical concerns which limits what we can do to people. Unfortunately, not all cultures place the same value on humans as we do. Nazi scientists performed horrible experiments on people to try to understand the limits of the human body. Most scientists agree these experiments are abominable, but there is debate on whether the discoveries made should still be used. Some say, as awful as the experiments were, they still provided data that could prove useful. Others say we shouldn’t even look at the data because of the inhumanity of the experiments. Of course, there’s also the question of whether the data itself is even useful. Many scientists believe that the experiments were so flawed heuristically, that the data is worthless and can’t really explain anything.
Gender bias is another thing which effects how science works. Gender bias has led to the discrepancy in the amount of women who engage in the hard sciences. Gender bias also contributes to what is investigated. Female birth control pills (pills that temporarily sterilize a person) has been around since the 1960s, yet such a pill for men has remained elusive and not very important. This bias puts the burden on women to prevent pregnancy as opposed to men.
Gender bias also determines how science investigates certain problems. Strokes and cardiovascular disease often effect men and women in different ways which bear on a patient’s responsiveness to different treatments. This can effect survivability, recovery and subsequent quality of life. Yet, most studies of strokes rely on samples made up entirely of male animals. When male is considered the norm, extrapolations are made to women which could have serious consequences. The same thing happened with the study of cardiovascular disease. As of 1993, 80% of trials used no females in their sample size. Not just that, but the males used in those trials were often middle-aged, though it is known that women generally experience cardiovascular disease at older ages then men.
As we can see, science is far from independent from social factors and is often deeply political. With everything we’ve gone over, I think it is clear that science is underpinned by enormous array of philosophical presuppositions that are not as easy to answer as one might think. Now, you may say that most scientists already deal with these problems while they’re sciencing, so why do we need philosophers of science? Well, whether we actually need philosophers of science is a whole different can of worms. When scientists are dealing with these problems, the discourse and thought-process they use is no longer purely scientific. They are engaging in philosophy of science.
We’ll end this video by listing off a number of other questions that philosophy of science asks.
If you’re into chemistry some of the interests philosophers have are:
If you’re into psychology, many interests include:
Maybe you’re one of those people into math. Well, philosophy has a discipline for you:
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