This essay has been gnawing away at the back of my mind
since I read Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1962) and my repeated frustration with non-scientist media personalities’ attempts to "explain" science. I forgive these individuals for their misunderstanding because science is opaque to
outsiders since much of its practice is passed on as an oral tradition from
supervisors and senior scientists to their students and post-doctoral
researchers (post-docs). In addition, many aspects of science are taught
through their practice rather than explicit explanations or definitions; such that
not only is science composed of unwritten rules it is also composed of unwrite-able
rules. However, in order to understand the success of science as demonstrated
by the ubiquity of its products in modern life, we need to examine these unwritten
principles and practices.
Purpose of Science
Science, like all academic fields, is motivated by our
desire to understand the world in which we live. But this is not the purpose of
science. I argue the purpose of science is to enable us to predict the outcomes
of our actions. For it is only through accurate predictions can we realize our
intentions. The drives which inspire modern science are the same as those which
inspired prehistoric man to learn to make fire to keep warm or to predict the
location of prey before heading out to hunt. This focus on utility rather than
ultimate knowledge has been a major factor in the success of science as opposed
to many other academic disciplines and leads naturally to the fundamental
assumptions and philosophy of science.
Philosophy of Science
There are two fundamental assumptions upon which all of
science is based. Firstly, it is assumed that reality exists and is coherent.
Without this assumption all attempts to understand reality are pointless and
yet any philosophers reading this will be familiar with the impossibility of
proving that a material reality exists or in finding any reason why reality
should be coherent. Thus these assumptions are a necessity. Secondly, science
assumes that reality behaves consistently over time. In order for past
observations to be useful for predicting the outcome of future events, we must
assume the rules which governed them still apply today and will apply in the
future. Without this second assumption knowledge about reality cannot be gained;
it only exists in the moment of its discovery. Science and all understanding of the world
around us would be impossible without these two assumptions, and the success of
science suggests they are valid assumptions to make.
In
addition to these assumptions, the final core belief of science I will discuss
is the importance of observation and experiment to achieving its purpose. This
belief can be explained based on the purpose of utility in science. In order to
be useful to explain and predict the outcomes of our actions, ideas must be
able to explain observations of about the world and predictions must be checked
against experiments. These assumptions and principles are not unique to science
thus are insufficient as a definition of science, rather science is the result
of our attempts to compensate for our human limitations and failings in the
pursuit of these ideas.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
