What qualifies as science

[ComradeRed]

What does qualify for science? I was debating a chemistry major the other day and proved Astro-physics is natural philosophy and Economics is a science(thank you Socratic method); but that lead me to ask: "What the hell is science?"

[SonofRage]

Well according to Wikipedia:


Science is both a process of gaining knowledge, and the organized body of knowledge gained by this process. The scientific process is the systematic acquisition of new knowledge about a system. This systematic acquisition is generally the scientific method, and the system is generally nature. Science is also the scientific knowledge that has been systematically acquired by this scientific process.

Some would call Philosophy "the first science."

[flyby]

this is an excellent questoin.

In my opinion: a scientific ideology and method is one that seeks to understand the world by looking close at reality and how it works.

It is very different from a mystical or metaphysical ideology -- that seeks to understand the world in other ways ("let me pray on that." "let me see what the bible says." "I have a premonition of what will happen.")

Bourgeois ideology on science says it applies to natural processes, but not to human society (as if human society is not part of the natural universe!)

So they say chemistry is a science, but Marxism can't be.

But in fact, our class and oppressed people (generally) can understand the world (and their own oppression, and their path to liberation) SCIENTIFICALLY.

In fact we can't get free if we don't learn to grapple deeply with complex reality (economics, natural science, military doctrine, political systems, controversies of ideology etc.)

[Djehuti]

Science is not the truth, science is not about proving stuff, science is not the summary of the recepies that always succeed, etc. Science is the Hypothetic-deductive method. The first real scientist was Galileo Galilei. Galileis trial in 1633 was a historical breakpoint. Not because it was a process between the geocentric view of the church and Kopernikus & Galileis heliocenric view (that belief is also since long obsolete), but because it was an decisive battle between logic and science. And Galilei was wise enough to understand that it was not his astronomical theories that was his great discovery, but his method. Hence he officially abandoned his heliocentric beliefs.

[redstar2000]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2004, 05:14 PM
I was debating a chemistry major the other day and proved Astro-physics is natural philosophy and Economics is a science (thank you Socratic method)...
Pick on somebody your own size. :D

:redstar2000:

The Redstar2000 Papers (http://www.redstar2000papers.fightcapitalism.net)

A site about communist ideas

[Gunman]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2004, 12:21 PM
Science is not the truth, science is not about proving stuff, science is not the summary of the recepies that always succeed, etc. Science is the Hypothetic-deductive method.
what the...? So what´s science all about? Isn´t science for proofing any kind of theory,
and the conclusion would be considered as a "truth"?

[ComradeRed]

Truth is the goal in philosophy, not science. The other stuff...I dunno :D

[Gunman]

Originally posted by [email protected] 3 2004, 11:45 PM
Truth is the goal in philosophy, not science. The other stuff...I dunno :D
So what´s the goal in science? I think its also for the search of the truth

[NovelGentry]

For the most part I would consider philosophy and science very much the same thing, what I would attribute as a key difference between the two is that science has perceivable visual evidence, it has conclusive results which our 5 senses are able to pick up on. Philosophy on the other hand cannot have such conclusive results, although can derive at truth through the same methods as science, there is, however, no way of ensuring the absolute truth of the matter -- at the point there is, I would say it is now science.

[Djehuti]

Originally posted by Gunman+Dec 3 2004, 11:24 PM--> (Gunman @ Dec 3 2004, 11:24 PM)
[email protected] 29 2004, 12:21 PM
Science is not the truth, science is not about proving stuff, science is not the summary of the recepies that always succeed, etc. Science is the Hypothetic-deductive method.
what the...? So what´s science all about? Isn´t science for proofing any kind of theory,
and the conclusion would be considered as a "truth"? [/b]
Science is about developing theories, or rather theoretical models. A theory is a "proved" hypothesis, even though it is commonly used as...well another word for idea.

To be a scientist these days is not any longer about discovering laws of nature and such stuff, it has been so though. And that was probably related to the belief of old that the scientific method was inductive rather then hypothetic-deductive. Today, scientists build models rather then find discover "laws", and the models are much more usefull then the laws really, from them you can draw much more and deeper conclutions than from laws,
and they are not absolute, but relative, provisorical, open for revision. And they are not as fragile.

[ComradeChris]

Science encompasses far too much. Some people even claim theology as a science, well others claim it&#39;s the complete opposite of science. Some genius along the way even decided claim politics as a science. Someone mentioned that philosophers claimed philosophy to be science. That was in Ancient Greece and Indo-European cultures. Now it seems to have changed to encompass anything that the most common idea is that anything that&#39;s practicable in the physical world is defined as science. Some people seem to encorporate the two as science. It&#39;s all relative...unfortunately <_< .

[Trissy]

This is a very interesting issue and one that I care very much about seeing as I was doing a Chemistry degree prior to switching to a Philosophy degree (and no...not because I found it too hard&#33;).


I was debating a chemistry major the other day and proved Astro-physics is natural philosophy and Economics is a science(thank you Socratic method); but that lead me to ask: "What the hell is science?"
Okay well the first thing we have to ask is who thinks you &#39;proved&#39; it? Just you? You and your opponent? Whatever the case I find it hard to believe that you managed to conclusively decide that science is especially when we considering that the philosophy of science is a contentious area with many rival views....


In my opinion: a scientific ideology and method is one that seeks to understand the world by looking close at reality and how it works
Not exactly a helpful definition because we are then lead to ask you what you mean by understanding and by reality. Kant drew peoples attention to the fact that there is a difference between the phenomenal world (the world as it appears ) and the noumenal world (the world as it is [i.e. the world regardless of the perspective of a peciever]). The issue in science is how we can go from one (our sensations) to the other (the world behind our sensations), and this is what your particular definition struggles to take answer.


Bourgeois ideology on science says it applies to natural processes, but not to human society (as if human society is not part of the natural universe&#33;)

So they say chemistry is a science, but Marxism can&#39;t be.
Well Popper&#39;s Falsificationist view of science doesn&#39;t count Marxism as a Science and to a point I think that Popper has a point. I don&#39;t believe that Popper was merely a philosopher for the ruling classes and nor do I think Kuhn was. I tend to agree with both of their rival theories that Marxism is not a science. Also atrology and Psychoanalysis don&#39;t count as sciences. The list of pseudo-sciences produced by their rival views of science is quite long in fact...


Science is not the truth, science is not about proving stuff, science is not the summary of the recepies that always succeed, etc.
Although I tend to disagree with the rest of this post I do agree with this notion (but probably for much different reasons). I tend to hold a view of Science that is a mixture of Nietzsche and Kuhn with a tiny bit of Feyeraband. This is an anti-realist view of science that states that namely science is our best way of understanding the world as it appears to be to us, and that it in no way can reveal what the &#39;real&#39; world is behind it is as metaphysicians would desire. Science is more useful then religion in the sense that it helps us gain a feeling for probability as such and so produce better practical results. What it cannot do is produce truth in a Realist sense, and by that we should understand the ability to precict the future with no chance of error.


what the...? So what´s science all about? Isn´t science for proofing any kind of theory,
and the conclusion would be considered as a "truth"?
It depends on the definition of science that you hold.

Inductionists believe that science is the production of a theory from a series of observations of a similar kind. This has lots of problems to it.

Falsificationists believe that science is testing a theory (or conjecture/guess) and throwing away whatever we find to be false. Whatever cannot be proved false is meaningless, and what can be proved false but hasn&#39;t been (such as E=mc^2) is te most accurate thoery we have. This is also problematic because we never arrive at the truth that is science&#39;s goal.

Kuhn&#39;s view of science is that science is signified by a single paradigm (or &#39;world view&#39;). It goes through periods of normal science and revoluntionary science but we never arrive at truth but rather better systems of understanding the world as it appears. Interestingly past paradigms (e.g. Just Newtonian mechanics) are incommensurable with current paradigms (e.g. Einsteinian Mechanics).

In all theories of science you will find problems with this idea of &#39;proof&#39; and &#39;truth&#39;. But do not be afraid&#33; We are far from falling into the abyss of nihilism&#33; In such circumstances we find that we have new challenges and new comforts...


Truth is the goal in philosophy, not science
I think you&#39;d find hundreds of thousand of scientists who intuitively disagreed with you. Some would claim that science and philosophy both aim to discover truth if not in slightly different ways and regarding slightly different areas.


science has perceivable visual evidence, it has conclusive results which our 5 senses are able to pick up on.
A rather tricky claim to establish as you may appreciate from what I have written already. This strikes me as being quite an Empiricist view of science but that in itself is highly problematic as people familiar with Locke and Hume would acknowledge. What do you mean exactly by &#39;conclusive&#39;? I seems a problematic term to apply to [i]a posteriori statements that we get from our senses.


To be a scientist these days is not any longer about discovering laws of nature and such stuff, it has been so though. And that was probably related to the belief of old that the scientific method was inductive rather then hypothetic-deductive. Today, scientists build models rather then find discover "laws", and the models are much more usefull then the laws really, from them you can draw much more and deeper conclutions than from laws,
and they are not absolute, but relative, provisorical, open for revision. And they are not as fragile.
Very well put but I think we need to add something to this. Although the models may not be necessarily as fragile (Popper may disagree) we perhaps can say that they are more vissibiley corrupt. An ideal view of science is that it searches for Truth but a Nietzschean view of this is that it is mere illusion, or rather a nice trick we play on ourselves and on others. Science is now seen (especially to some areasof Marxism) as a mere tool of Capitalism and self-gain. Truth is no longer the ends, but rather &#39;truth&#39; is a means to an end. Take a look at advertising today. How many things claim to be &#39;scientifically&#39; proved? Science has taken the throne of religion and in some ways we should be happy...in other ways we should be aware that it is not as perfect as we first hoped it might be.


Science encompasses far too much. Some people even claim theology as a science, well others claim it&#39;s the complete opposite of science
Which is what caused Popper to try and distinguish between Science and Pseudo-Science.


Some genius along the way even decided claim politics as a science
I tend to agree with Popper and Kuhn on this one. Politics, sociology, quite a bit of Psychology and many other subject falsely claim to be sciences merely in order to produce stronger beliefs and justification for their thoughts.


Someone mentioned that philosophers claimed philosophy to be science. That was in Ancient Greece and Indo-European cultures
Not quite. In the times of Hume and Locke you&#39;ll find that the distinction between the two was not as clear as we have it today. So much so that Hume thought of his work as partly scientific...

[ComradeRed]

Okay well the first thing we have to ask is who thinks you &#39;proved&#39; it? Just you? You and your opponent? I argued that science required observation and explanation. My opponent assented. I argued that we cannot know a good bulk of astro-physics from observation(e.g. is the universe finite or infinite?) but we can reason it(well, because of a, b, and c, the universe must be infinite/finite), whereas in Economics we observe what happened(the great depression) and can explain why it happened.


I think you&#39;d find hundreds of thousand of scientists who intuitively disagreed with you. Ahh, but neither empirically nor rationally, but intuitively disagree&#33;


Some would claim that science and philosophy both aim to discover truth if not in slightly different ways and regarding slightly different areas. Science is the navigation of an Objective reality.

[Dyst]

Everything can be calculated, including philosophical issues. Science, philosophy, religion, research etc. are all just different words for mathematics.

[Trissy]

Everything can be calculated, including philosophical issues. Science, philosophy, religion, research etc. are all just different words for mathematics.
So do you deny that freewill exists phenomenally? Knowledge of the world in a noumenal or metaphysical sense is none of our concern because as such it is unnattainable. If you do deny freewill as a phenomenon, then how do you attempt to account for &#39;justice&#39;. If I am not accoutable for my actions then how can you punish me for them?

Also do you believe that ethical issues as can be resolved through refference to mathmatics?If so then I&#39;d like to see you step into the shoes of a pregnant rape victim who&#39;s struggling to decide whether to have an abortion or not...

The idea that the metaphysical nature of the Universe is number was famously put forward by Pythagoras of course but whatever the truth of such a statement I see no reason to take it into account in this world more then is necessary (i.e. limited to the fields of science and maths). For as Nietzsche said of all metaphysical truths, they are as much use to us as the knowledge of the chemical formula of water is to the drowning sailor...

[Trissy]

I argued that science required observation and explanation. My opponent assented. I argued that we cannot know a good bulk of astro-physics from observation (e.g. is the universe finite or infinite?) but we can reason it(well, because of a, b, and c, the universe must be infinite/finite), whereas in Economics we observe what happened(the great depression) and can explain why it happened.
Yes well it seems odd to object to the idea that science does not involve both observation and an attempt at explanation but I don&#39;t think the issues you raised &#39;proved&#39; that much because you don&#39;t seem to clarify what you believe the relation of the two to each other is. As I have mentioned before there are two main views of Science that both revolve around observation and explanation (or as they might put it &#39;theory&#39;) and these all contain problems. I&#39;ll just go into a little more detail on both of them in an attempt to show that things such as economics and the such like are hard to classify as sciences.

Verificationism/Inductionism
This is a very popular view of science that was held by a group of philosophers called the Vienna circle and especially a philosopher of science by the name of Rudolph Carnap. It can be traced back in various forms to philosophers such as Locke, Hume and the early work of Wittgenstein. It states basically that there are only two types of meaningful statement and these are analytic statements and synthetic ones. Analytic ones are statements that involve tautology such as &#39;all bachelors are unmarried men&#39; or &#39;2+2=4&#39;. Synthetic statements are those that can be verified by the senses such as &#39;there is a cat in the corner of this room&#39;. All other forms of statement (e.g. that rose is beautiful) are meaningless. If I look in the corner and see a cat then the statement has been verified and if I don&#39;t then it has been falsified...either way the statement is meaningful because you know how you can prove something to be true. The way this relates to science is in the fact that the people hold that from a set of observations (X1, X2, X3....Xn) you can construct theories such as &#39;if X then Y&#39; (e.g. if you heat a metal it will expand). I think this appears to be the view of science that you&#39;re putting forward is it not?

Okay now what are the problems with this theory?
* It is self-refuting since Logical Positivism (the idea that only synthetic or analytic statements have meaning) itself cannot be verified through the sense and so is meaningless.
* The view seems to struggle when it comes to observations. We limit our observations in science so when you&#39;re observing the planets you don&#39;t observe the sea or your lunch, etc. We have no real way of explaining this unless we introduce the idea of &#39;theory-laden observations&#39; (i.e. that I have a theory about what I should and should not observe) but then we have no observations to justify our initial theories and then we find the key concern of the Inductionist view (i.e. Observations) getting very muddled.
* Inductionism cannot give us Truth because a) we can never make every possible observation and so cannot guarantee that we haven&#39;t overlooked anything. b) When making predictions from the theory we have to assume that the physical laws of nature are uniform which we cannot do. c) We cannot be infallible in our observations and hence our theories cannot be infallible.

An example the problem raised in a) is that prior to going to Australia the Europeans believed that all swans were white because that is all they have ever observe and yet on arriving in Australia they discovered black swans.

Problem b) basically just states that we cannot know that the law of gravity will exist five minutes from now because it has held true on Earth for the last 500 years. Inductionists want to be able to make predictions about the future that are based on &#39;reality&#39; but you cannot get from observations of the past to necessarily true predictions about the future. It requires as much faith as science lambastes religion for dealing with&#33;

Problem c) is fairly straight forward. If we observe something that is not in line with our past observations then do we discard the theory or not believe the observation? Feyerabend raised this very point against claims that science is objective by saying that within the scientific field there is competition and people have ulterior motives in their actions just like in all other aspects of life. If I want to make myself a name in science then I may need to stab a few backs and slag off a few people&#39;s papers in order to state my theory&#33;
* Under the loose definition of science creating theories from observation things such as Christian science, economics, psychoanalysis and Marxism all become sciences as this seems odd (as we shall see by considering what Popper had to say).

Falsificationism
A philosopher of Science was extremely worried by this last idea. The problem with Psychoanalysis as he saw it was that the Psychoanalysist can give may examples of cases that prove their theory but what evidence can you present against it? How can I argue against the existence of the unconscious or the theory that the Super-Ego governs the struggle between our Id and our Ego? The problem is that there is no way of falsifying them&#33; Even if you can come up with a counter example to trouble a theory the problem for Popper is that the Psychoanalysist and the Marxist would both try to incorporate the evidence into their theory somehow (and so defend the theory through use of &#39;ad hoc&#39; reasoning.

For Popper what had happened is that people like Carnap had placed the emphasis the wrong way around and that instead of observation being our starting point we should look at theory&#33; Something is scientific and meaningful for Popper iff you know what evidence could possibly falsify it. For example E=mc^2 is falsifiable if you find a case where E is greater than mc^2. &#39;The mind is split into the Id, Ego and Super-Ego&#39; or &#39;Jesus was the son of God&#39; on the other hand is not falsifiable because we don&#39;t know how to falsify it, and hence they are meaningless statements.

For a Popperian what science does is put forward a theory (or conjecture) and then try to falsify it as much as they can. If the conjecture is successfully refuted then you discard it and try to make a more accurate conjecture that may survive refutation for longer (e.g. &#39;The sun and the moon revolve around the Earth&#39; being replaced by &#39;The Earth revolves around the Sun, and the moon revolves around the Earth&#39;). The more claims a conjecture makes the better because there is more potential evidence out there that could falsify the theory

What are the problems with this view?
*Well firstly as science is an unending quest for the Popperian it cannot claim to have discovered Truth or knowledge of Truth because we will always have to try and falsify our conjectures. Rather all we can ever say about our most accurate up to our present moment in time.
*It could also be self-refuting because how can we falsify Falsificationism? This means it is as meaningless as the Psychoanalysis and Marxism that it set out to deny scientific status to.
* Our conjectures are at least in some way based on our past observations. We now have the opposite problem that the Inductionists had. Observation-laden conjectures?

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Anyway as we can see we have no reason to accept Economics just because it made an observation and created a theory as to why it happened. For a Popperian would be more concerned with how you can falsify the theory without adding to it &#39;[i]ad hoc &#39;. If in the future we had the same circumstances present that the Economist believes brought about the great depression, would they predict that the same thing would happen again? If it did not would they discard their theory? Also Economics (and Marxism&#39;s view of economic determinism) struggle when it comes to determinism as well in the eyes of a Falsificationist. How can you possibly falsify a claim that &#39;all our actions are the result of previous actions&#39;? Whatever evidence is presented will be claimed to verify the claim surely? We certainly appear to have freewill, how can the macroscopic theories of Economics/Marxism relate to the microscopic appearance that we have freewill?

The claim that X is Science/a branch of Science depends a lot on where you stand in relation to all of the highly problematic points raised against both Falsificationism and Inductionism.


Ahh, but neither empirically nor rationally, but intuitively disagree&#33;
Not necessarily. You expressed an inductionist view of Science and for all I know you may never have come accross the views of Carnap, Hume, Locke and others. Likewise people could agree with what Popper says and have never heard of the man. Some views stem from intuition but that doesn&#39;t mean they&#39;re necessarily irrational or invalid.


Science is the navigation of an Objective reality.
What Objective reality? Scientific Realists have yet to resolve the problem raised by Kant, namely that there is a difference between the world as it appears (Phenomenal world) and the world as it is (Noumenal world). The sense give you one but I have yet to hear a persuasive argument that people have discovered anything in regards to the second...

[ComradeChris]

Originally posted by [email protected] 10 2004, 11:21 PM

Science encompasses far too much. Some people even claim theology as a science, well others claim it&#39;s the complete opposite of science
Which is what caused Popper to try and distinguish between Science and Pseudo-Science.


Some genius along the way even decided claim politics as a science
I tend to agree with Popper and Kuhn on this one. Politics, sociology, quite a bit of Psychology and many other subject falsely claim to be sciences merely in order to produce stronger beliefs and justification for their thoughts.


Someone mentioned that philosophers claimed philosophy to be science. That was in Ancient Greece and Indo-European cultures
Not quite. In the times of Hume and Locke you&#39;ll find that the distinction between the two was not as clear as we have it today. So much so that Hume thought of his work as partly scientific...
I agree with that Popper fellow then. I&#39;ve never heard any of his theories though (except maybe through teachers&#39; and professors&#39; opinions).

And to: "Not quite. In the times of Hume and Locke you&#39;ll find that the distinction between the two was not as clear as we have it today. So much so that Hume thought of his work as partly scientific..." I went on to say some people today classify then together too. It wasn&#39;t just in Ancient Greece and Indo-European cultures (I knew that). But that&#39;s were the philosophical method of science seems to originate.

[Djehuti]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11 2004, 03:21 AM
Well Popper&#39;s Falsificationist view of science doesn&#39;t count Marxism as a Science and to a point I think that Popper has a point.
The problem with Popper&#39;s falsification theory is that...well its stupid.
When Kuhn published his book of the scientific revolutions in 1962 we hoped that this would be the end of the scholastics...but some dinousaurs does not seem to realize that they are dead, one of these is Sir Karl Popper.

Popper never really understood what science was; still he thought that science was a logical construction and therefor should be treated as such. It is not.
Even though he understood that science was tested deductivly, he still strangely enought believed that science was inductive in its essence: one single factor that did not completly logically agreed with the theory, was enough to immediately and fully discard it. Critics, such as Imre Lakatos pointed out that if that was the case, we would have to put down the whole science, except maybe for pure formal sciences such as logic and most areas of mathematics...and that is totally insane.

Scientific theories is not judged as logical constructions,
but after its ability to navigate the scientific ground.

[Trissy]

The problem with Popper&#39;s falsification theory is that...well its stupid.

Indeed it is filled with quite a few problems but no more so then the Inductivist account of Science. I think Popper at least has value in the fact that he argued against the scientific nature of Psychoanalysis and Marxism. Kuhn did go on to provide another different account of Science and so did Feyerabend. I think I agree with different issues raised in all three drastically different views of Science...but then again I am a scientific anti-realist so it&#39;s not that surprising.